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THE HAPPY IRISH 
HAROLD BEGBIE 




Photo Lafayette 



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THE HAPPY IRISH 



BY 

HAROLD BEGBIE 

AUTHOR OP 
'*THB CHALLBNGB," **THB CAG8," 
DAV XHAX CHANGBD TBB WORLD,** BTC., BTC. 



THERE DWELLS SWEET LOVE, AND CONSTANT CHASTITY, 
UNSPOTTED FAITH, AND COMELY WOMANHOOD, 
REGARD OF HONOUR, AND MILD MODESTY. 

SPBNSBR. 




HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



TO MY FRIEND 

ROBERT DONALD 

A POLITICIAN WITHOUT BITTERNESS 

A JOURNALIST WITHOUT MALICE 

A MAN WITHOUT ENEMIES 



I AM indebted to the Editor of the Daily 
ChronicUf at whose suggestion I went to 
Ireland, for his kind permission to incorpo- 
rate into this book certain chapters or parts 
of chapters which appeared as articles in 
his newspaper. This book appeared in 
England under the title of THE LADY 
NEXT DOOR— for the American edition 
I have chosen the title THE HAPPY 
IRISH. 



FOREWORD 

AS if a guiding Providence had so ordered it, 
the indestructible soul of Ireland emerges 
from the smoke and ruin of an upheaval in the 
labour world which has shaken England to her very 
foundations. 

It is a cHmax, a coincidence, luminous with 
meaning for mankind. 

Ireland enters upon the strewn and trembling 
stage of British politics with a significance, not only 
for England, not only for the British Empire, but 
for aU the foremost nations of the earth now re- 
garding each other from the outposts of civiHzation, 
from the fortified and haunted frontiers of progress, 
with a dolorous apprehension. 

She does not arraign the ambitions of these 
civiHzed nations — ^many of whom learned the 
alphabet of their first pure culture from her own 
heroic sons— but she asks to disentangle herself 
from the confusions of an industriaUsm, the violence 
of a materiahsm, and the brutahzing ugHness of a 
false civiHzation, into which she has been dragged, 
harshly and tyrannously dragged, against her 
judgment and her will. 

7 



8 FOREWORD 

In making this claim for liberty, Ireland must 
surely dispose the conscience of England to reflect 
upon the character of English civilization, the course 
and purpose of EngHsh progress. To the troubled 
nations of the earth, but in particular to England, 
Ireland now puts the question which her missionaries 
asked of heathen Europe in the sixth century, What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and 
lose his soul aHve ? 

It is a question of arithmetic. England, long 
accustomed to the logic of the ledger, long versed 
in the grammar of Profit and Loss, should be able 
to give an intelligent answer. 

What shall it profit a nation if it become the 
clearing-house of the whole world, and miss the way 
to peace ? What shall it profit a democracy if it 
gain the whole Wages of Mammon, and lose the 
Joy of Life ? 

Are we not at least incHned to forget, both politi- 
cally and individually, that nothing which belongs 
to peace, nothing which tells "in making up the 
main account " can be bought with money ? 



CONTENTS 

PAQB 

Foreword . . . . . . . . 7 

Preface 11 

CHAPTER I 

By Way of Introduction .... 19 

CHAPTER n 
The Bishop's Dream 41 

CHAPTER III 
The Life of a Town 60 

CHAPTER IV 

Testimonies . • « . . . .84 

CHAPTER V 
A Quaker's Parlour 105 

CHAPTER VI 

Fenian, Lawyer, and Earl . . . .118 

CHAPTER VII 

MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS . . . 139 

CHAPTER VIII 
Petty Larcenies 150 

CHAPTER IX 
A Case of Persecution 161 

CHAPTER X 
The Fine Flower 175 

9 



10 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XI PAGE 

Because it is Always Dublin . . . 186 

CHAPTER XII 
The Dame 200 

CHAPTER XIII 
A Corner op Ulster 209 

CHAPTER XIV 
Hannah 226 

CHAPTER XV 
At the Gate of Democracy .... 238 

CHAPTER XVI 
Manufactured Mortality .... 248 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Orange Capital 255 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Babies 265 

CHAPTER XIX 
Maids op the Mill 274 

CHAPTER XX 
Wealth 28S 

CHAPTER XXI 
The Gospel of Mammon . . . . 292 

CHAPTER XXII 
Conclusions . . . . . . . 304 

NOTE 
On the Sweating of Belfast . . . 326 



PREFACE 

AN honest man, going to Ireland with no pre- 
judgments in his mind, might easily return 
from his study with inspiration, argimients, cita- 
tions, and economical data for two distinct books. 
One book would persuade the world to call for 
Home Rule. The other book would convince the 
world to maintain the Union. I can conceive of a 
perfectly just and righteous man writing both these 
books. 

A Frenchman once said of a certain critic that this 
ingenious gentleman had three ways of making an 
article : to assert, to re-assert, and to contradict him- 
self. But in the two books for which I can imagine 
a single writer there would be no violence of con- 
tradiction, no confession of conversion, no casuistry, 
shuffling, explanatory apologetics, and peevish 
vindications of a changed mind. Each work would 
blow into the air the steam of a distinct thesis, 
would travel if on parallel then on separate Hnes, 
and not side by side, racing to left and right of the 
same platform at a single terminus, but in clean 
contrary directions, passing each other only foi 



12 PREFACE 

a single moment, looking all the way for different 
signals, and reaching ultimately the other's antipodes. 

And neither of these two books — ^this is interest- 
ing and fuU of encouragement for the bored reader 
of poHtical speeches and factioneering pamphlets — 
would make use of arguments employed by the 
rival protagonists of Irish poHtics. Both books 
would belong to humanity rather than to faction, 
and the two covers might be dyed with any colour in 
the milliner's window save orange and green. 

It is aU a question of definition, purpose, and 
point of view. What is life ? What is the object 
of existence ? What is the conscious direction of 
your own spiritual progress ? Until one has come 
to a more or less reasonable conclusion on these 
matters, it is idle to entertain a definite, rigid, and 
exclusive opinion on the subject of Ireland ; and, 
since the scope of these matters is so wide and so 
uncertainly mapped, the same man, in different 
moods, looking at the identical question from two 
distinct points of view, may come with equal 
honesty to conclusions at variance with each other, 
so entirely at variance that they are not reaUy in 
conflict. " Corot disait que pour saisir Vdme et la 
beaute d*un paysage, il fallait savoir s^asseoir." 

1 mean this : that a man perfectly satisfied with 
civihzation, convinced that social evolution is pur- 
suing the right road, and persuaded that competi- 
tive commercialism is the predestined way of the 



PREFACE 13 

human species, would come to an opinion about 
Ireland different from the conclusion of a man who 
suspected civilization and felt himself inclined to call 
a halt to the progress of disorderly materialism. Or, 
the very same man, feeling at one moment that he 
could do nothing to arrest the movement of de- 
mocracy and at another moment inspired to beheve 
that the only hope of salvation lay in a violent 
antagonism to this power, would come honestly and 
righteously to two different decisions. 

For myself, I went to Ireland with the leaning 
towards Home Rule of a man who knows the Im- 
perial Parhament to be congested and who has 
the loose inherited faith of the average modern in 
the usefulness of local government. Beginning at 
the south I worked my way zigzag through the 
villages and Httle towns of rural Ireland tiU I came 
to the north, and I arrived in the north with no 
more definite idea in my mind than this conviction, 
that the Irish people are charming, dehghtful, 
virtuous, and sagacious. The industrial north filled 
me with depression. I can think of few sharper 
contrasts in the world than to go from some beauti- 
ful village on the coast of Donegal straight to the 
squalor, the poverty, the desperate ugliness and 
the deadening depravity of Belfast. This was my 
experience. I came from the rugged grandeur of 
Port-na-blah, from the society and gracious hos- 
pitality of happy peasants and kindly fishermen, 



14 PREFACE 

into the mud and destitution, into the noise and 
vulgarity, into the shabbiness and disquiet of Bel- 
fast. I am no stranger to slums, I am acquainted 
with the poverty of big cities in many countries 
both East and West, but I was overwhelmed by 
this particular contrast. I felt in Belfast that 
industriaHsm was the enemy of the human race, 
I compared the beautiful faces and the noble 
manners of those primitive people with whom I 
had stayed on the shores of Sheep Haven with the 
hard looks, the stunted bodies, the anaemic faces, 
and the rough manners of these thousands of human 
beings crowding the streets of Belfast. And I felt 
that civihzation had taken a wrong turning, that 
progress was hurrying along a road that led only 
to destruction, that hfe as industriaHsm had made 
it was something harsh and detestable, something for 
which humanity owed no laudamus to the heavens. 
One night I sat in my hotel at Belfast with a 
singularly enHghtened member of the working- 
class, a local leader of the Sociahst party. We dis- 
cussed for some time the wages paid in Belfast 
factories, the conditions of labour, housing, and 
the Insurance Act, of which he is an enthusiastic 
supporter. Then we turned to the general question 
of Sociahsm. Towards the end of our coUoquy 
I said to him, " Are you quite sure that you will 
get aU the social reforms you require in Belfast 
out of an Irish ParHament ? " 



PREFACE 15 

His eyes expressed surprise, he regarded me for 
a moment with astonishment, then, laughing as 
one who sees his way out of perplexity, he de- 
manded with amusement, " You don't think I'm 
a Home Ruler, do you ? " 

The incredulity of his tone surprised me, for it 
expressed a far greater contempt of Home Rule 
than ever I had heard on the lips of perfervid 
Orangemen. 

" Are you not ? " I inquired. 

He repHed, with decision : "I should think 
not ! No ; I'm a Unionist, out and out. England 
is absolutely essential to us. An Irish Parliament 
would be entirely Tory. It would do nothing in the 
direction of SociaHsm, quite the reverse ; it would 
be the most Conservative Government in the world. 
But we can screw out of England all we want, bit 
by bit, and she can help us to pay the bill ! " 

Then I saw an argument for the Union which the 
professional agitators of the Orange Party in their 
devotion to religious animosities have excluded from 
their oratory ; and I saw also an argument for 
Home Rule which the Liberals of England in their 
enthusiasm for social reform have omitted from 
their dialectic. Here at my side was a Socialist, 
a man of great intelligence devoted to the better- 
ment of working-class existence, a man for whom 
Mr. Lloyd George does not move fast enough, and 
who condemns the manual labourer for trusting 



16 PREFACE 

to his trade union instead of using, with an absolute 
force and with an uncompromising energy, the 
political instrument — and he was a Unionist ! 

Penetrate to the soul of poHtical contention, and 
there is always perplexity. The Tory defends the 
Indian Government, the SociaHst attacks it ; and 
yet the Indian Government owns the railways and 
the land of India, and uses public funds for the 
purpose of developing national trade. What the 
Socialist wants in England he attacks in India, and 
what the Tory condemns in England he passionately 
defends in India. Lord Curzon is a Tory in England, 
a SociaHst in India ; and Mr. Keir Hardie is a 
Socialist in England, a Tory in India. " The world's 
heroes have room for all positive qualities, even 
those which are disreputable, in the capacious theatre 
of their dispositions." 

But the perplexity is even greater in the case of 
Ireland. EngHsh Conservatives and Ulster Socialists 
are of one mind about the Union ; English Socialists 
and Irish Conservatives are of one mind about Home 
Rule. The Enghsh Conservative condemns Home 
Rule, and the Irish Conservative clamours for it. 
The Irish Radical fights for the Union, and the 
English Radical condemns it. Sir Edward Carson 
commands the regiments of Irish Socialism in 
the army of British Conservatism, and Mr. John 
Redmond leads in the army of Irish Conservatism 
the regiments of English Socialism. 



PREFACE 17 

Such chaos and confusion may seem incredible, 
but it is true ; and, indeed, it is this very confusion 
which puts into a man's hand the veritable thread 
which he must follow if he would emerge into the 
light and sanity of open air from the lab3rrinth of 
Irish pohtics. 

There are two Irelands — ^not as they are known 
to Enghsh people as CathoHc and Protestant Ire- 
land, as Home Rule and Unionist Ireland, but 
Conservative Ireland and Democratic Ireland. Con- 
servative Ireland regards Home Rule as the one 
way of escape from the industrial anarchy, the 
commercial brutahty,the ultimate bankruptcy, which 
she holds must be the inevitable fate of union with 
England ; and Democratic Ireland, filled with the 
Futurist's enthusiasm for machinery and modernity, 
and utterly reckless of agriculture, regards the 
Union as her one means of marching abreast with 
the civihzed nations to the goal of SociaHsm. 

It requires profound thinking and a prudent 
judgment to decide which of these Irelands has 
the truer vision. I am persuaded, for instance, that 
a mere pressure of atmosphere, a httle change in 
the weather, even a sHght difference in the digestive 
organs, might turn the judgment of so nice a 
philosopher as Mr. Arthur Balfour from one decision 
to the other. Are we not aU the victims of our 
moods, and do not our moods largely control for us 
the judgments of our intellects ? Does not life 



18 PREFACE 

fluctuate for all of us, as once for Bishop Blougram, 
between faith diversified by doubt and doubt diver- 
sified by faith ? But let a man settle once and for 
all his definitions of Hfe, and hold to them, if he can, 
throughout his reflections on Ireland, and then he 
may possibly reach a conclusion to which he can 
give the energy of his voice and the solemn affirma- 
tion of his vote. 



CHAPTER I 

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

I 

rpO fall in with popular notions is the wisdom 
-*- of most transitory writing. One thing the 
self-respecting reader resents with energy, and 
that is disturbance of his prejudices, upheaval in 
his preconceptions. 

Thus it is that a distinguished writer recently 
began a book on Paris with the charming avowal 
that no sooner had he detrained than he felt a 
sparkHng tide of festive gaiety surge up against 
him from the pavements of Paris and bear him 
smiling and radiant away into the sunlight of that 
briUiant city's incomparable joy. The driver of 
his cab, he tells us, sang all the way from the 
station to the hotel. Whether the distinguished 
author, infected by this gaiety, pushed his hat to 
the back of his head and joined in the chorus, we 
are not informed ; nor is it stated that the hall 
porter executed a 'pas seul at his entrance into the 
hotel, that the hft boys broke into song, and that 
the clerks at the office pledged him in champagne. 

19 



20 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

But enough was said, and with the first stroke of 
the pen, to set the self-respecting reader entirely 
at his ease, and we may fancy how he straightway 
settled himself down in his arm-chair, stretched 
his legs, puUed complacently at his pipe, and gave 
himself completely into the safe-keeping of this 
jolly and confirmatory author. 

But consider the state of that reader's feehngs if 
the book had opened with a reference to the mental 
fatigue of streets too long and rigid, to the lugu- 
brious melancholy of fat cab-drivers, to the listless, 
fagged, weary, and bored expression of pale-faced, 
goggle-eyed gentlemen gathered round tin tables 
at dusty boulevard restaurants, like mourners at a 
wake, to the blase and cynical aspect of a music- 
hall audience, to the poverty and wretchedness of 
Parisian miserables, to the dullness and torpor of 
overdressed children in the Bois — ^in fact, to that 
total sensation of ennui and exhaustion which 
strikes the mind of many travellers in their pere- 
grinations of the French capital. No ; such a 
beginning would be fatal to a cheerful progress. 
Paris, by the common consent of universal ignor- 
ance, is the gayest city in the world. . . . 

Now, the popular notion of Ireland is the reverse 
of all this. Ireland is a distressful country, a 
savage and dreary country populated, except in a 
brilliant north, by assassins and dynamitards who 
sleep with a pig in their beds, and spend the day 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 21 

either in tearing holes in their own coats, or tread- 
ing on the tails of somebody else's coat. Of late a 
body of writers has arisen with the gospel of another 
Ireland, but it is still a melancholy Ireland. Ac- 
cording to these mystical authors there is some- 
thing sad and tragic in the very atmosphere of 
Ireland, a spirit of wistful reverie broods upon 
Irish Hfe with the pensive sorrow of an immemorial 
grief. In the tender manner of Pierre Loti, and 
with the elegant gestures of Rossetti, they breathe 
into our susceptible souls the feeUng that Ireland 
is gloomed with some unearthly woe and tortured 
by an everlasting spiritual unrest. To deny the 
gospel of these mystics, to say that potatoes flourish 
in the soil and Httle boys go sHding on the frozen 
ponds, is to confess oneself dull of soul and lacking 
in refinement of spirit. 

And, again, there is the popular notion that Irish 
life is consumed in the fiery furnace of poHtical 
controversy. It was bad enough, we are told, 
when the CathoHcs warred against the Protestants, 
and when the Home Rulers took arms against the 
Unionists ; but now, when the Home Rule camp 
is the scene of an internecine conflict so fierce and 
implacable that no man's Hfe is safe from Portrush 
to Skibbereen — the country has become unpardon- 
ably tiresome. 

And so the average EngHshman, who has his gar- 
den to plant, who is worrying over a chess problem, 



22 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

who suffers from indigestion, and who has just 
received a troublesome letter from his aunt in the 
country, puts Ireland out of his head and wishes 
that confounded country, if not ten thousand 
leagues under the sea, at least three thousand 
miles away from EngHsh shores. 

But if the inquirer can manage to exist for a few 
weeks without confirmation of his prejudices, and 
can accustom himself for the same period to the 
mental disturbance of receiving illumination, he 
will surely find that a journey in Ireland is as 
deHghtful and interesting an occupation as any- 
thing to which he has ever addressed his affections 
and intelligence. He will be refreshed by the contra- 
dictions of his prejudices, and exhilarated by the 
enlightenment of his ignorance. In a word, he will 
find that there is nothing in life half so beguifing 
and half so amusing as sober truth. The truth 
about Ireland — the social, political and religious 
truth — ^is perhaps the most interesting romance in 
the world. 

Therefore, if I cannot secure the confidence of 
my reader by beginning with the customary sigh, 
at least let me stimulate his curiosity by this hint 
of something strange and amusing. He will find 
himself, if he be so good as to foUow me, in the 
stimulating and agreeable company of noble land- 
lords, sitting in the cabins of Donegal peasants 
over a peat fire on the stone hearth, listening to 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 23 

the thunders of a Fenian, supping and sitting up 
to all hours in the night with a CathoHc bishop, 
chatting to a sharp Quaker, standing in a snow 
bhzzard on the rugged cHffs that front the Atlantic, 
wandering in glens as beautiful as fairyland, talk- 
ing to lovely maidens who blush and hang the head 
before a stranger, hearing the tales of old men who 
remember the great famine, visiting a hospital, 
examining a school, penetrating slums, moralizing 
in a monastery, and discussing without fear of fire- 
arms or shillelaghs some of the most delicate 
problems which agitate the Hibernian bosom. 
And as he makes the journey, he wiU find, if my 
conceit does not mislead me, that the tangle of 
Irish politics is a very simple and human matter, 
that the great rock of difficulty, known as the Irish 
question, is but a pleasant hill for a morning's 
walk, and that the chief thing to become acquainted 
with in Ireland is the Irish heart, which is as kindly 
and gracious and patient a centre of human affec- 
tions as the heart of the woman he loves best in the 
world. 

" No man," said Parnell, and created a false im- 
pression, " has a right to fix the boundary of the 
march of a nation." One does not hear in Ireland 
the tramp of a multitude marching through the 
night, does not see stern and exalted faces hfted to 
the dawn, does not discern the moving of dark 
banners in the gloom of the upper air. Rather one 



24 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

beholds a young and capable matron seated at her 
fireside, who raises her grey eyes to the visitor, and 
says without apology, but with a whimsical and 
ingratiating play of laughter at her Ups, " I wish to 
do my own housekeeping ; I think I can do it in a 
better way, and more cheaply, than other people 
can do it for me. I have no desire to fall out with 
my neighbours, no inclination to remember old 
scores against them. I simply want to be left alone 
to attend to my own business and bring up my own 
family in my own way." 

The old gentleman next door may be alarmed by 
this ambition, but the lady has really no more evil 
intent against his prosperity than to sell him the 
surplus of her butter and eggs. 



II 
THE OFFENCES OF OUR FOREFATHERS 

Before we set out to visit our neighbour, it is 
well to have in mind some knowledge of the temper 
which characterized our past relations, if only to 
avoid a faux pas. 

To begin with, then, it is a fact acknowledged by 
every historian, high and low, that England, having 
set herself to subdue the Irish, without success, 
screwed herseK to the point of attempting to exter- 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 25 

minate these irrepressible neighbours. This is a 
most important matter to keep in mind. AU the 
pother of these present days has flowed from 
England's blundered poHcy of extermination. Our 
forefathers endeavoured to wipe the Irish slate clean 
of Irishmen. They did not succeed. The remnant 
which survived the bloody sponge refused to kiss 
the hand which had clenched itself to erase them. 

The poet Spenser has described one after-effect 
of this poHcy : " Out of every corner of the woods 
and glens, they came creeping forth upon their 
hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they 
looked like anatomies of death ; they spake like 
ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat of 
the dead carrions, happy were they if they could 
find them, yea, and one another soon after, inso- 
much as the very carcases they spared not to scrape 
out of their graves. ... In short space there were 
none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful 
country suddenly made void of man or beast." 

Sir Arthur Chichester saw some children gnaw- 
ing at the flesh of their starved mother. Lecky 
tells how old women lighted fires to attract children, 
whom they slew and devoured. The English 
soldiery put to the sword " bHnd and feeble men, 
women, boys, and girls, rich persons, idiots, and 
old people." M. Paul Dubois narrates : " In the 
Desmond country, when aU resistance was at an 
end, the soldiers forced the people into old barns, 



26 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

which they then set on fire, putting to the sword 
any who sought to escape ; . . . soldiers were seen 
to catch up children on the points of their swords, 
making them squirm in the air in their death agony ; 
. . . women were found hanged from trees, with 
the children at their bosoms strangled in the hair 
of their mothers." 

Not only did the EngHsh destroy crops and drive 
cattle into their own camps that the Irish might be 
starved, not only this, but they deHberately and 
with cunning purpose made a great slaughter of 
infants. The terrible phrase, almost the most 
terrible phrase in human records, "Nits wiU be 
lice," was the laughing, murderous, and devilish 
justification for this slaughter of babes. The steel 
of England's might ran red with the blood of Irish 
infancy. Lips that had not learned to speak a 
human word, Hps that knew nothing more than to 
hang contented at the circle of the mother's breast, 
were twitched with agony, uttered screams of 
desperate pain, and grew purple in the wrench of 
violent death. Little feet that had but lately got 
the trick of balance ran, stumbled, and fell before 
the smoking swords of most inhuman murderers. 
Little hands that had but lately learned to fold 
themselves in prayer were raised in clamorous 
appeal for mercy to men who smote them down, 
and set their heels upon those stricken faces. " Nits 
wiU be lice," cried these slaughtering devils, and 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 27 

the beautiful flower of Irish childhood was crushed 
into the bloody ooze of a land that was like hell. 

Most men who have abandoned the idea of 
eternal torment reserve some special place of 
agony and torture in the next world for Philip the 
Second of Spain, the Duke of Alva, and Cardinal 
GranveUe. They could not meet those souls in 
heaven without murderous thoughts and instincts 
only fit for Gehenna. But the atrocities in the Low 
Countries, those atrocities out of which the spirit 
of WiUiam the Silent rose godlike and subHme, 
can be matched step by step, and inch by inch in 
the records of England's dealing with Ireland. No 
just Englishman can read that history without a 
shudder, without an overwhelming sense of shame, 
without uttering the prayer, " Remember not, Lord, 
our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers." 

On the evening of Dettingen, George the Second 
exclaimed, " God curse the laws that made these 
men my enemies ! " And M. Paul Dubois pro- 
nounces true judgment when he says, " It was 
England herself, it was the EngHsh in Ireland, that 
made the Irish rebels." Mr. John M. Robertson 
has justly summarized our dealings with Ireland 
in these few sentences : " Seven centuries of rapine 
and violence. Carelessness alternating with ferocity. 
Not a gleam of humanity, nor of political wisdom. 
Not even the wisdom of the peasant, who takes 
care of his beast, lest it perish." 



28 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

In vain did England plant out in Ireland people 
from her own shires, and people from the neigh- 
bour land of Scotland. In vain to these aliens did 
she give the rich pastures of Ireland, and forbid 
them either to speak Irish or to marry with Irish 
women. The rightful children of the soil, the little 
remnant that had escaped extermination, absorbed 
these invaders into the mysterious spirit of Irish 
existence. Depressed, broken, crushed, degraded, 
and impoverished, the faithful remnant did, never- 
theless, in some most marvellous manner conquer 
without force of arms these foreign masters, and 
make them more Irish than the Irish. They clung 
to one thing, these aliens, one thing which marks 
their children to this present day — an arrogant 
conviction of superiority, a determination to main- 
tain a social, political, and rehgious ascendancy ; 
but in aU else they became Irish, as different from 
the people of England and Scotland as the people 
of Glamorganshire are different from the people of 
Norfolk. Spenser exclaimed, " Lord, how quickly 
doth that country alter men's natures ! " 

To a rightful appreciation of modern Ireland, 
it is essential that the English mind should possess, 
at least, this knowledge of the past. England's 
poMcy was first to subdue, then to exterminate, 
afterwards to overwhelm with an alien population. 
For seven centuries she showed to Ireland neither 
mercy nor wisdom, neither kindness nor inteUi- 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 29 

gence. For seven centuries she was tyrant, op- 
pressor, and panic-minded coward. Never once 
did she employ righteousness and peace, justice 
and conciHation. And it was not until famine had 
driven Ireland to transitory crime, and transitory 
crime had driven England to fear, that the thought 
of responsibility, the idea of justice and reparation 
occurred to a few just and noble Englishmen. 

" Your oppressions," said Lord John Russell, 
" have taught the Irish to hate, your concessions 
to brave you. You have exhibited to them how 
scanty was the stream of your bounty, how full the 
tribute of your fear." 

England's whole poHcy towards Ireland may be 
expressed in two words : A crime and a blunder. 
This is a judgment with which Unionists and Home 
Rulers, every honest man in every nation under 
the sun, cannot help but concur. A crime and a 
blunder. 



Ill 

CROMWELLIAN COMMERCE 

This also is a thing to bear in mind : — 

When England had beaten the poor Irish to 

their knees, had laid waste that lovely land, and 

planted out her own subsidized people in every 

quarter of the country, one thing remained vital 



30 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

and unsubdued — the indestructible soul of the 
Irish nation. Practical people in England guffaw 
at this indestructible soul ; gentlemen with money 
in the stocks, and a considerable stake in the 
country, ridicule any reference to the matter as a 
piece of stupid sentimentalism. Nationality, they 
say, butters no parsnips. An indestructible soul is 
not so useful as a balance at the bank. But these 
practical people are more versed in affairs of the 
Money Market than in the steadfast lessons of 
history. 

A sense of Nationality is the Hfe-blood of a people. 
It is the quickening power which animates their 
action, enlarges their vision, and directs their 
hopes. And in Ireland, crushed and broken Ire- 
land, even in her darkest hour, this conviction of 
an indestructible soul, this sense of sacred and 
affectionate Nationality, has kept ahve aU that is 
noble, all that is glorious, all that is beautiful and 
pure in Irish character. Nor was this passion of 
the spirit wasted in the region of sentiment or con- 
fined to the tubs and barrels of political agitation. 
It became a force in commerce. The practical 
people who now scoff at the idea of Irish 
NationaHty cannot know that the inspiration of 
Nationahty drove the suffering Irish from their 
knees, hfted them from the morass of destruction, 
and set them to the task of forging a destiny. Ire- 
land became rich and prosperous. If she had 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 31 

stopped at that — if the spirit of Irish Nationality 
had arrested its pressure at that point — all might 
now be well with her. But rich, prosperous and 
rejoicing, this happy people set no boundary to 
their ambition. They became in their impious 
progress the rivals of England. And England — 
not with the sword, but with those instruments 
which Tariff Reformers would again place in her 
cleansed hands — once more reduced Ireland to 
beggary and ruin. 

" One by one," said Lord Dufferin, " each of our 
nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, 
or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous 
custody of the rival interests of England, until at 
last every fountain of wealth was hermetically 
sealed, and even the traditions of commercial 
enterprise have perished through desuetude." 
Irish ships, laden with beef, mutton, taUow, hides, 
leather, and wool, sailed every week to Dunkirk, 
Ostend, Naples, La Rochelle, and the West Indies, 
till England began to quake for her trade. And 
then came Navigation Acts which broke this grow- 
ing trade upon the sea, and reduced Ireland to 
direst want. " The conveniency," cried Swift, " of 
ports and harbours which Nature bestowed so 
hberally upon this kingdom, is of no more use to 
us than to a man shut up in a dungeon." Ireland 
turned her attention to wool. " A real industrial 
enthusiasm," says Lecky, " had arisen in the nation. 



32 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

Great numbers of English, Scotch and even foreign 
manufacturers came over. Many thousands of 
men were employed in the trade, and aU the signs 
of a great rising industry were visible." But 
frightened England stepped in and forbade the 
exportation. Commerce produced its CromweU, 
the Bible in one hand, a tariff in the other. " So 
ended," says Lecky, " the fairest promise Ireland 
had ever known of becoming a prosperous and 
happy country." 

In 1798 Lord Clare made this statement : " There 
is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe 
which has advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, 
with the same rapidity in the same period as Ire- 
land." In the same year the bankers of DubHn 
passed the resolution " that since the renunciation 
of the power of Great Britain in 1782 to legislate 
for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this 
kingdom have eminently increased." " From the 
concession of free trade in 1779," says Lecky, " to 
the Rebellion of 1798, the national progress of 
Ireland was rapid and uninterrupted. In ten years 
from 1782 the exports more than trebled." 

Then England saw that to conquer Ireland was 
but a smaU thing in comparison with destroying 
her sense of NatiohaHty. And to destroy her 
Nationahty she brought about the chief scandal 
and the blackest crime of her legislative history — 
the Act of Union. Gentlemen in Ulster profess 




Photo. Mason, Dublin. 

BY THE WAYSIDE. 




I'noto. Mason, Dublin. 



A WATERFALL. 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 33 

loyalty to this Act of Union, they threatened to 
kick Queen Victoria's crown into the Boyne if it 
were repealed, to fight for it they have advertised 
for rifles in German newspapers, to uphold it Lord 
Londonderry has lavishly devoted his intellect and 
wealth, and Sir Edward Carson has practised the 
oratory of a stage rebel. But what in very 
truth is this Act of Union which Orangemen would 
have us hold as something sacrosanct and pure ? 
It is something to shudder the soul of an honest 
man. 

Hear what Lecky has to say : " The years between 
1779 and 1798 were probably the most prosperous 
in Irish history, and the generation which followed 
the Union was one of the most miserable. The 
sacrifice of NationaHty was extorted by the most 
enormous corruption in the history of representa- 
tive institutions. It was demanded by no con- 
siderable portion of the Irish people. ... As it 
was carried, it was a crime of the deepest turpitude, 
which, by imposing with every circumstance of 
infamy a new form of government on a reluctant 
and protesting nation, has vitiated the whole 
course of Irish opinion." Professor Dicey declares 
that if the Act of Union could have been referred 
to a court of law, it must at once have been can- 
celled " as a contract hopelessly tainted with fraud 
and corruption." Gladstone said : "I know no 
blacker or fouler transaction in the history of man 



34 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

than the making of the Union between England 
and Ireland." Ireland, indeed, was swindled out 
of her national independence ; and the traitors in 
her own camp were either rewarded with titles or 
paid, like cash tradesmen, with enormous sums of 
money, which a shameless England did not scruple 
to charge upon Ireland. 

This is the great Act for which Lord Londonderry, 
Sir Edward Carson, and the Orangemen of Belfast, 
with a well-advertised piety, are ready to lay down 
their Uves, for which they are willing to perish in 
metaphor on the banks of the Boyne, the sacred 
document with which they make piteous and 
theatrical appeal to the loyalty of ignorant EngMsh- 
men. England, that first set herself to conquer, 
then to exterminate, and afterwards to beggar the 
inhabitants of Ireland, by this Act of Union, Hke a 
common scoundrel on Epsom Heath, deHberately 
swindled Ireland out of her national independence. 
And ever since that day, an impoverished, dispirited, 
and vanishing Ireland has struggled by every 
means in her failing power to recover that without 
which she can neither Hft up her head nor restore 
her broken fortunes — struggled heroically, des- 
perately, violently, and for a httle space criminally, 
to recover her spirit of Nationahty. 

When you consider the history of Ireland, are you 
not amazed that any man in England can be found 
to sneer at that tide of almost holy money which 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 35 

the expatriated children of Ireland save and send 
home every year for the recovery of their country's 
freedom ? 



IV 
WITHIN LIVING MEMORY 

The old man sat forward in his chair, holding a 
black felt hat in his hands which he swung nervously 
between his legs. His pale face was clean-shaven 
and thin, the features refined, the dark eyes, set 
deep under the brows, appeared dim and blurred. 
His hair, of which he had plenty, was the colour of 
snow. 

The Bishop, in biretta and soutane, leaned against 
the mantelpiece, and questioned the old man : 
*' You remember the great famine, don't you — the 
famine of '47 and '48 ? " 

In slow and deliberate fashion, speaking in a 
deep voice, the old man made answer : "I do, me 
lord ; I remember it very well." 

" Tell us something about it, something that you 
yourself saw and knew. You understand me ? " 

" Perfectly, me lord. I understand you very 
weU." 

" Come, then, let us hear what you have to say." 

" Well, me lord " — sitting back, opening the top 
button of his frieze coat, and assuming the grave 



36 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

expression of a national historian — " I remember 
the day, just as if it was only last week, when me 
father come home and said that the taties were 
specked. There were Httle black spots all over 
them. That, me lord, was the beginning of the 
great famine. The seed pertaties, do you see, 
were ..." 

" Yes, but tell us what you yourself saw and 
suffered." 

" I will, me lord." After a pause, shifting in his 
chair, and moistening his Hps : " Well, me lord, I 
remember very weU that all round the country 
hereabouts the tatie crop was a failure. The 
ground gave nothing but Httle, poor things no 
bigger than marbles, and all specked with the 
disease ..." 

" Yes, yes ; but tell us about the people, about 
yourself ; tell us how you Hved during the famine." 

"How we Hved, me lord ! God knows we lived 
very poorly. There was nothing for us, don't you 
see, but the Httle specked taties, and not many of 
them. I remember how me mother gave most of 
that food to me father, saying that he had to do 
the work in the fields, and needed the food more 
than the rest of us. She herself, good soul, took 
just enough to help her through the day's work ; 
and we Httle ones got what was left, which was 
sometimes only the water in which the taties had 
been boiled. It was hungry times, me lord. Ah, 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 37 

and it got worse. Soon there were no taties at all. 
I can mind how we went out to hunt for turnips in 
the field. Turnips are good food, but the starving 
sheep were of the same opinion ! — they left httle of 
them for us at aU. We used to pull up the roots, 
the Httle tail of the roots, which the sheep had left 
in the earth after eating down the turnips level 
with the ground. There was not much nourish- 
ment in that, me lord, but we were terribly grateful 
to find them roots. Then it came to chewing nettles 
and docks, and even grass. I've seen people nearly 
mad for food chewing a handful of rank grass. Ah, 
me lord, they were bad times, bad times they 
were." 

" And the people died ? " 

" Like flies, me lord ; and particular the little 
children. They died so fast there was no time for 
decent burial. A big box was made ; it was driven 
round on a car ; the poor dead bodies were picked 
up in the road or taken out of the houses, put in 
the box, and then carted to the burying-ground. 
A great pit was dug there, and into that pit the 
dead bodies were tumbled out of the box, one atop 
of the other. Terrible times ! It was wonderful, 
me lord, how people died in them times. They 
died standing, died leaning against doors, dropped 
down sudden in the road. I remember me father 
coming on a man who was resting against a wall. 
Me father was a terrible man for his pipe, and he 



38 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

offers his pipe to that poor fellow, and ses he, 
' Take a pull, man, it will warm you,' he ses. Then 
he went off to get a car for the man ; but when he 
got back the poor fellow was leaning in the same 
position, dead as dead." 

" And you were turned out of your houses, 
weren't you ? " 

" That is so, me lord. You must understand 
that some time before the Government had made 
the landlords responsible for all rates and taxes. 
Instead of collecting from the tenants, the Govern- 
ment collected from the landlords, and the land- 
lords added the taxes to the rents. Well, do you 
see, me lord, when the poor starving people had no 
money, and couldn't pay their rents, the landlords 
still had to pay the rates and taxes. So they 
thought they would be ruined, and it seemed to 
them better to have the houses empty, because 
then they wouldn't have to pay the taxes. That 
was how it was, me lord." 

" Well, what did they do ? " 

" When the tenants wouldn't turn out, me lord, 
the agent came with a party of men, and they 
swung a great rope under the eave of the thatch, 
and then, with a kind of a jerk and a run backwards, 
they ripped the roofs clean off the Httle cabins. If 
that didn't do, they set fire to the house. We were 
burned out, me lord, like rats. Ah, it was a sight 
to see the roads filled with men, women, and chil- 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 39 

dren, all starving and dying, with no home at all, 
and no shelter from the rain. It was a sight I shall 
never forget, me lord — ^never. Hundreds and hun- 
dreds of men, women, and children. ..." 

The Bishop turned to me. In a whisper he said : 
" One of the landlords in the neighbourhood was a 
Church of England clergyman. He kept a yacht, 
which he used to fill with disreputable women, and 
then go cruising in the Mediterranean ! " He added : 
" What made the famine so hard for the people to 
bear was their knowledge that food existed in Ire- 
land plentiful enough to supply their needs. But it 
was sent to England. It was sent where money 
could be got for it. And the money was required to 
pay the landlords' rents." 

" Ah, that is true, me lord," exclaimed the old 
man, smiting his knee with a clenched fist. " There 
was plenty of good food in the country, plenty ; 
but we weren't allowed to touch it. . . ." 

In another part of the country you may see a 
magnificent house standing in a great demesne and 
surrounded by a wall. To make the demesne, 
farmers were turned out of their holdings, and given 
miserable land on the hillside ; to lay the roads, to 
build the mansion, and to erect the wall, tenants 
were ordered to give so many days' work — " duty 
days " — ^for which they received no wages. 

A lady belonging to what is called the " Enghsh 
garrison" said to me: "I blame the landlords for 



40 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

everything bad that has happened in Ireland. They 
had the greatest chance in the world." They were 
not all bad ; some were good men ; but among 
them were monsters, tjo-ants, and petty thieves. 

The patience, the submissiveness, the loyalty, the 
devotion, and the courtesy of the Irish peasant — 
even now, after centuries of tyranny and brutality — 
fill the mind with admiration and with wonder. 
And, remember, they have heard with their ears 
the story of our past oppressions, and there are stiU 
living old people who tell how landlords burned 
them hke rats out of their wretched hovels when 
the land was wasted by famine. " Och, but sure 
that was in the old times, your honour," says the 
peasant ; " thim was terrible times ; but, glory be 
to God, it's a different time now altogether," 



CHAPTER II 
THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

IT was my good fortune to spend a few days in 
the beautiful and happy south of Ireland with 
a very remarkable Roman Cathohc Bishop. This 
brilliant and engaging man is chiefly famous as an 
authority on the financial relations between Great 
Britain and Ireland. Blue Books are the staple of 
his reading, as statistics are the passion of his hfe. 
In a moment, with a pinch of snufF between thumb 
and index, his biretta at the back of his head, he 
can tell you the exports and imports in a given year, 
quote you the latest figures from the Board of Trade, 
give you the population of Belgium or Poland, 
analyse the entire revenue returns of Great Britain, 
and marshal the legions of humanity in three orderly 
columns of pounds, shiUings and pence. 

But he is something more than auditor to the 
human race and financial expert of the United 
Kingdom. He is a man who holds that hfe must 
be controlled and directed, that it can be made 
happy and secure, that it is wholly in the hands of 
men to decide whether it shall flow peacefully, 

41 



42 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

broadly, and beautifully to its destined end. He 
does not believe in a Time Spirit that urges mortality 
forward. He does not believe that man is powerless 
in the winds of fate. He does not believe that we are 
driven like a flock of sheep. No ; he beheves that 
the same choice is presented to nations as to in- 
dividual men, and that by its deliberate choice a 
nation may walk quietly towards God, as by its 
dehberate choice, or the mere absence of decision 
one way or the other, it may go headlong to the 
devil. He argues that everything depends upon 
this choice. 

One night, after dinner, we sat up till past three 
in the morning discussing this aspect of the Irish 
question. The table remained uncleared ; the 
housekeeper, who cooks and waits and does every- 
thing else in the house, was sent to bed. At the 
appointed hour the Bishop withdrew to say his 
Office, leaving me to my cigarette and my reflections, 
and then returned to his seat at the head of the 
table. And the night ended — ^but I do not propose 
to keep the reader up so late — with a discussion 
on the Athanasian Creed ! 

With one arm, clothed in the sleeve of his purple- 
edged soutane, laid across a corner of the disordered 
table, his buckled shoes tucked under his chair, the 
biretta pushed far back on his head so that the 
thick grey hair was visible, the Httle Bishop leaned 
towards me, his red face wreathed with smiles, his 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 43 

small, deep-sunken eyes bright with animation, his 
large mouth cheerful with good - humour, and 
rolled me out his mind. 

So far as I can remember it, this was the soul of 
what he said : — 

" People in England do not understand what is 
at the back of our demand for Home Rule, what is 
the spirit that animates the Irish movement. They 
remember some extravagant utterance of a Fenian, 
or some rather flamboyant piece of rhetoric ejacu- 
lated by a heated poHtician in the excitement of 
debate ; and they think that we are inspired by 
hatred of England — the whole movement of Irish 
nationaHty inspired by hatred of England ! Of 
course there are in Ireland people who hate England, 
and of course there are many more people who 
persuade themselves that they ought to hate Eng- 
land ; but that is not the spirit of the Irish move- 
ment. In England you have people who say feverish 
and reckless things about Germany, and I suppose 
a man who thought it worth while might form a 
collection of extracts from speeches and newspaper 
articles which would make it seem that the whole 
spirit of English ImperiaHsm was hatred and 
jealousy of Germany. But would it be true ? 
Would it not be very foolish to assert that the whole 
pohcy and diplomacy of the EngHsh people are 
inspired by enmity towards Germany ? 

" WeU, it is equally fooHsh, equally unfrue and 



44 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

unjust, to say that the great movement of the Irish 
people towards freedom and self-government is 
urged forward by antagonism to England. There 
is antagonism between the two countries, a real, 
unalterable, and inevitable antagonism, but that 
is the work of nature. Politicians have nothing 
to do with it. Have you ever thought what that 
antagonism is ? It is one of the main arguments 
for Irish self-government, traced back to its source, 
it is the spirit which animates, and has ever animated, 
the movement of Irish nationaUty. Let us talk 
about it. 

" England is a rich, industrial, and conquering 
nation. Ireland is a poor, agricultural, and domesti- 
cated nation. England's population has increased 
by leaps and bounds, and has flooded across the 
habitable globe, taking countries, colonizing coun- 
tries, estabHshing an empire of enormous extent. 
Ireland's population — since the Union with England 
— has dwindled in a desperate degree. Her revenue 
has fallen. Her trade has almost vanished. Her 
sons do not go forth to conquer and to colonize, but 
as poor emigrants, weeping bitterly and loth to go. 

" What is the antagonism ? It is economic. 
There is nothing here of Celtic hatred for the Saxon, 
or of Saxon contempt for the Celt. It is the natural, 
the inevitable antagonism which separates a rich 
industrial nation from a poor agricultural nation. 
Unionist politicians maintain that the wholly an- 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 45 

tagonistic interests of the two countries can be 
combined, can be made one. They declare that the 
British Parhament can budget and legislate for 
two countries whose interests, talents, and re- 
sources are entirely different. They might as well 
argue that the legislation and the budgets of West- 
minster are equally suitable for Denmark or India ! 
How can a rich industrial nation legislate and 
budget for a poor agricultural nation ? Who would 
not smile if a poHtician suggested that a rich man 
should order a poor man to keep house on the same 
scale as his own ? Must not the two houses be 
separate in finance and management, even as they 
are separate in bricks and mortar ? 

" Let me give you two or three instances of the 
blunders which come from this discordant union. 
Take Old Age Pensions. In England five shillings 
a week is only just sufficient for the needs of an 
old person ; in Ireland it is too much. In England 
it is hard to get a cottage under two shillings a 
week ; in Ireland rents are as low as a shilhng, nine- 
pence, even sixpence a week. Two old people in 
England, a man and wife, with five shillings a week 
each can manage to live ; in Ireland such a couple 
are unnecessarily rich. Not only are commodities 
cheaper in Ireland, but the manner of living is 
simpler, very much simpler. Our pensions ought 
to be three-and-sixpence a week at the most. But 
Ireland has to run at the side of galloping England, 



46 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

and we are saddled with your harness and pull at 
your load. 

" Then, again, take the question of Income Tax. 
In England you place no tax on incomes of £160 
a year, and you deduct this sum from aU moderate 
incomes before you begin to take your toll. Well, 
this is perhaps a suitable method for a rich country, 
a country where there is a vast population and a 
very considerable number of extremely well-off 
people. But it is unsuitable for a poor country in 
which the numbers of very wealthy people can be 
reckoned in two or three minutes. This objection 
applies equally to Death Duties. Ireland keeps 
fairly abreast of England and Scotland among the 
smaller sums contributed by moderate estates, but 
directly we come to very considerable estates she 
contributes nothing at all. Those blanks in the 
columns of the statistical table are extremely signifi- 
cant. 

" Once more : the tendency of taxation in Eng- 
land is towards wealth, and wealth alone. Your 
phrase the ' Free Breakfast Table ' means that you 
want to relieve the poor of every single tax in your 
budgets. You seek to take off the toll on tea, on 
sugar, on coffee, on currants, perhaps on tobacco. 
Well, that is very good, it is excellent — for a rich 
country. But do you see what that means ? It 
means this : that if the Union continue, if the 
enactments of your Chancellors of Exchequer are 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 47 

to apply to Ireland equally with England, Ireland 
will be a dead unprofitable loss of many millions 
a year to the British Treasury. Do you see ? 
That is inevitable. You wiU get a Httle from income 
tax, something from excise, almost nothing from 
death duties, and absolutely nothing at all from 
customs. Are you prepared for that loss ? Do the 
people of England care to pay all the biU, are they 
prepared to fiU Ireland's purse and leave her free to 
enjoy herself ? 

" Consider, on the other hand, how much more 
reasonable it is that Ireland should keep house for 
herself. We should economize, because we are 
poor. We should simphfy, because we are not 
ambitious. And we should arrange our taxes to 
suit the means of our own people. We should tax 
small incomes, levy death duties on smaU estates, 
keep the taxes on tea, coffee, sugar, and tobacco ; 
in short, the direction and tendency of our taxation 
would be towards that mark from which yours is 
every year moving further away. We should keep 
house as Denmark keeps house, or as Belgium keeps 
house ; instead of having our house kept for us by 
the wealthiest and most extravagant housekeeper 
in the whole community of nations ! 

" Now, you may say. How foolish of you to 
cut adrift from us, when by your own showing we 
shall soon be paying the whole cost of your national 
existence, while, by cutting adrift, you will have 



48 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

to shoulder yourselves the entire burden of that 
existence ! Well, it sounds absurd, it sounds rather 
simple and stupid. But consider a moment. 

" In England you think of patriotism in a wide 
discursive and extended manner. Your patriotism 
is spread over a vast empire. The term for you 
connotes imperial grandeur and colonial expansion. 
You hardly think of England when you speak of 
patriotism ; you think of India, Canada, South 
Africa, Austraha, and some hundreds of Httle 
islands scattered you hardly know where ! It is 
difficult for you to think of patriotism as something 
local, racial, and circumscribed. If you so thought 
of it, you might be tempted to despise it. But 
there is such a patriotism. Denmark has it, Switzer- 
land has it — Ireland has it. And this national, 
racial, and local patriotism is a spirit that makes 
for independence. It is a spirit that dislikes dictation 
from outside, that cannot be content to sponge on 
other nations. And so this little, simple, and poor 
Ireland, instead of wishing to sponge upon rich 
England, desires to stand on her own feet, to 
shoulder her own burden, to pay her own way, to 
be a self-supporting, self-respecting, and self-reliant 
nation. 

" Why ? Is it only the obstinacy of conceit ? — 
is it only the braggart self-assertion of indepen- 
dence ? A Httle of that, perhaps, here and there. 
We are very much tarred with human nature ! But, 



w<^<^ 




THE BISHOP'S DREAM 49 

believe me, this spirit of Irish patriotism, taken all 
in all, is a righteous and a noble spirit. • John 
Bright saw far into the soul of Ireland when he said, 
Throw the Irish upon themselves ; make them forget 
England. We want to be thrown upon ourselves ; 
we want to forget the long enmity with England ; 
we want to feel ourselves responsible and free. It 
is our conviction that the more you pay our bills, 
and the more we hang upon you for our support, 
and the more you take our destiny out of our own 
hands, the more swift, the more searching, the more 
pervasive, will be the decay of our Irish manhood. 
And that is something we do not wish to see decay. 
We are ready to pay for it, as our fathers were ready 
to die for it. We say to England, Trust us : leave 
us to look after ourselves : we have a business to do 
in which you cannot take a part, the achievement 
,of which instead of being a danger to you will be a 
source of strength — it is the preservation of Irish 
character. 

" And now we come to a subject which wiU interest 
you more than any commercial chatter about bud- 
gets and taxation. 

" I do not say that every Irish politician realizes 
the truth of what I am going to say to you, nor do 
I assert that every Irish poUtician will agree with 
my sentiments. But I am pretty certain that at 
the back of the Irish movement, consciously or un- 
consciously, the ideas that I am now going to set 



50 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

before you are the driving force, the animating, 
vitalizing spirit. 

"Let me tell you my ideas in the shape of an 
aspiration, an ambition — ^if you like, a dream. I 
hold that the most precious thing in Ireland is 
neither the shipbuilding of the north nor the agricul- 
ture of the south, but Irish character. Irish charac- 
ter is to me, being a local patriot, a very precious 
and a most beautiful thing. The tenderness of Irish 
character, the purity, the chastity, the domestic 
virtues of that character, the simple faith, the un- 
questioning content and the wonderful self-reliance 
of Irish character, are for me the sovran values of 
Irish nationahty. I want to preserve them. I want 
to develop them. And so I ask for Home Rule. My 
ambition is that Ireland shaU Hve in the midst of 
the nations, as it was at the beginning of its history, 
a people that places God first, a people that does 
not seek to be rich, arrogant, and conquering, but 
devoted to beauty, consecrated to hoHness, content 
with simple things. And this does not seem to me 
a wild or an unpractical ambition. Nature, indeed, 
has ordained that this shall be our destiny. We 
have Httle but our fields and gardens to support us ; 
our inclination is almost solely towards agriculture ; 
we have httle or no taste for the excitements and 
excesses of a civihzation founded upon industriahsm. 
We are a people who love family hfe and who beUeve 
earnestly and sincerely the Christian rehgion. 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 51 

" I love to dream that Ireland may live isolated 
and yet in the midst of those tumultuous nations 
who are abandoned to commerciaHsm, a place where 
men may come from other lands, as it were to a re- 
treat — a place where they may refresh themselves 
with faith and establish in quiet the central touch 
of the soul with God. I love to think of Ireland 
peopled by a humble and satisfied humanity, the 
villages extending through the vaUeys, the towns 
never out of contact with the fields, the cities 
famous for learning and piety, the whole nation 
using life for its greatest end, its ultimate and eternal 
purpose. It would be surely a good thing for the 
British Empire to have such a sanctuary at its 
heart. Might not such an Ireland be of service to 
England, if only in reminding your democracy that 
no wages can buy happiness ? Are you not in some 
danger in this respect ? 

" My dream for Ireland is not quixotic. We can 
never be, except in the north, an industrial nation. 
We have no coal to speak of, we are too far from 
markets, and our genius is not in that direction. 
On the other hand, we are by nature and by in- 
cHnation husbandmen. We can get a Hving where 
an EngHshman would starve. We grow wheat 
where an Englishman would feed sheep. We are 
attached to the soil by a love which aU the tyranny 
and madness of a very wicked landlordism has not 
been able to destroy. And we are rich on little. 



52 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

" The strength of our national life is the chastity 
of our women. All the beauty of family Hfe in 
Ireland flows from the purity of Irish mothers. 
You have seen some of the cabins in which our 
people live ; not very long ago almost the whole 
peasantry of Ireland was housed in that way — 
one wretched room for the existence of a family — 
for eating, sleeping, everything. WeU, in spite of 
such a dreadful environment, the purity of the 
people has persisted. Our women are chaste, our 
men are chivalrous, our children are virtuous. 
Nothing seems able to brutalize them. Here and 
there, of course, evil manifests itself ; we are not 
perfect ; but rare are the cases of seduction, almost 
unknown are the cases of adultery, and when such 
things occur they are met by the censure and the 
opposition of a virtuous public opinion. We can 
justly boast that our people are chaste. Now, with 
a nation so minded, and left to develop its own way 
of life, is it not certain that Ireland might become 
the sanctuary, the holy place, of my ambition ? 
What is to prevent it ? Our women breathe into 
the souls of their children a love for family life, our 
men teach their sons to cultivate the land and to 
turn the temper of the sulkiest soil on the side of 
a hill ; and father, mother, and children beUeve 
in God. Is there not here everything that makes 
for the beauty of life and the sanctity of social exist- 
ence ? 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 53 

" I do not mean that there will be no progress, 
that we shall remain cultivators and nothing but 
cultivators. We hope to raise our population to 
at least ten millions, and agriculture must therefore 
be fortified by industries. But we shall seek to 
develop village industries. Instead of factory towns, 
with their horrible slums, their poverty, and spiritual 
degradation, we shaU add Httle workshops and little 
factories to our villages. We shall always be in the 
first place, cultivators. We shall be the market- 
garden of England, perhaps one of its wheat-fields, 
and this will be our chief employment. But we shall 
seek to supply our own needs in the way of manu- 
factures ; so far as we can, we shall endeavour to 
make locally some at least of our chief necessities. 
It will never be our objective to export these manu- 
factures, never our ambition to come into com- 
mercial conflict with the great manufacturing 
nations like England and Germany ; no, we shall 
be content to make what we can for ourselves, and 
to support ourselves firstly and chiefly by the fruit 
of our fields. 

" Why cannot we do all this under the Union ? 
Because we have no incentive of enthusiasm ; 
because we are spoon-fed and debihtated with one 
of England's hands, let, hindered, and obstructed 
with the other ; because our intellect is absorbed 
by poHtics ; because we have a passion for freedom ; 
because we cannot rest while we are governed by 



54 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

another ; because the form of government under 
which we Hve has impoverished our industries and 
drained our population. It will take years before 
we can recover the lost ground, but with the first 
beating of enthusiasm in the blood of Ireland's 
freedom that recovery will begin. 

" Have I made you feel, have I convinced you, 
that the Irish question is a spiritual question, a 
reHgious question ? Our movement in its soul is 
that, nothing but that. We do not believe in the 
strife of industriahsm. We do not believe in the 
struggle for existence. We seek to disengage our- 
selves from all that strife and struggle, into which 
the Union has dragged us, in order that we may 
follow our own way of life, which is quiet, simple, 
and modest. We are quite certain that materialism 
is wrong. What is more important, we are quite 
certain that ideahsm is right. We make the con- 
scious choice of beauty and peace, rather than ugH- 
ness and contention. We deliberately elect for 
God, and as deHberately we reject Mammon. 

" You hear people say that Home Rule will be 
the death-blow of Rome in Ireland. That is not 
true. Ireland is reHgious, and Ireland is Catholic. 
At first, perhaps, the strong wine of freedom may 
tempt the younger generation to resent the paternal 
interference of the priest ; at first there may be an 
unreckoning enthusiasm for secular education, lead- 
ing to agnosticism ; but the habit of religion will 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 55 

assert itself again. I welcome Home Rule for one 
thing in this respect, that it will deliver the parish 
priest from the sphere of poHtics, and set him free 
for his purely spiritual duties. Remember that the 
priest has been driven into poHtics. In the bad 
times, before recent legislation, the peasants had 
no one else to whom they could carry their com- 
plaints against the landlord or his agent. The 
priest was the witness of barbarous cruelties. He 
saw his people defrauded, starved, ill-treated, some- 
times debased and demorahzed, driven into exile. 
Do you wonder that he became a poHtician ? Would 
not English clergymen become politicians in a like 
circumstance ? But with Irish freedom, the excuse, 
the justification, for this poHtical interference will 
go. And then the parish priest will devote himself 
solely to the spiritual needs of his people, he will 
instruct them exclusively how to live, and leave 
them to vote as they wiU. 

" You have seen something of the influence of the 
Irish priest. You are not a CathoHc, but do you 
see anything in that influence which is evil or 
dangerous ? Does not the parish priest, whatever 
be his dogmas, teach virtue and the love of God ? 
Do you know of any country in the world where 
the priest is more closely and intimately associated 
with the family Hfe of the nation, where his in- 
fluence is more powerful for beauty, kindness, and 
chastity ? Again, do you know of any clergy in 



56 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

the world with fewer black sheep among them than 
the clergy of Ireland ? 

" I am not afraid. Time wiU bring changes, life 
wiU advance, knowledge wiU modify even those 
opinions which seem to us now of primary im- 
portance ; but the essential characteristic of the, 
Irish nature wiU endure, and that characteristic is 
the reHgious sense. Ireland will never be infidel. 

" So it all comes to this : under the Union we are 
dragged against our will, we a poor and simple 
agricultural people, into the roaring machinery and 
the extravagant organization of a rich, complex, and 
industrial civilization. The more you bear our 
burdens, the more you paralyse our sense of re- 
sponsibility. The more you advance along your 
difficult road, the more you drag us from our 
firesides and our fields. We do not desire a complex 
civiHzation. We do not want to become sophisti- 
cated. We dishke and we suspect the elaborate 
machinery of your social Hfe. We say to you. Set 
us free : leave us to pursue our own path, to fulfil 
our own destiny. We feel that something more than 
our fortunes are bound up in this plea for self- 
government ; it is our character. You destroy our 
independence, you paralyse our self-reliance, you 
take away from us what God gives as a chief blessing 
to a nation, our sense of responsibiHty. We tend 
under the Union to become the parasites of your 
wealth, the hangers-on of your imperial greatness, 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 57 

the sponging toadies of your bounty. That, to us, 
is more than intolerable, more than perilous ; it is 
fatal to body, soul, and spirit. Canada could not 
advance in such shackles, Australia could not ad- 
vance in such bonds. South Africa in such a case 
would be a constant danger to your peace. Your 
genius is to preside over a brotherhood of free 
nations, to leave the component parts of your 
empire to develop along their own hnes ; the 
greater the freedom you grant them, the greater 
their loyalty, the greater your security. Why can- 
not you treat Ireland in the same way ? For how 
many centuries have you tried in vain to govern 
her from London, to destroy her nationahty, and 
to suppress the spirit of her independence ? Why 
make of this little island the single dark exception 
to the brilliant success of your genius for empire ? 

" BeHeve me, Ireland wiU never be at rest until 
she is free. Until you set her free she will be a 
thorn in your side. There will always be Irishmen 
— even if the dwindhng mass should become slothful 
and apathetic — ^who, for the sake of Irish character, 
will preach the ancient gospel of freedom, wiU rouse 
the undying spirit of her independence. You would 
surely do the same in England, if some power were 
at work which threatened your Enghsh character, 
which sapped and ruined the foundations of English 
manhood. You would fight, then, not for empire, 
but for character, for Hfe. It is the same with us. 



68 THE BISHOP'S DREAM 

Again and again I tell you that we are at war with 
you for the spirit of Irish nationality. We do not 
criticize your civiHzation, we admire many of your 
splendid qualities, we envy you much of your 
energj^, your grit, your sterling common sense ; but 
we think that your civiHzation is not suitable to 
Ireland, we believe that we have quahties that 
are of value to mankind, and we beheve that only 
by exercising the functions of self-government can 
we develop our kind of energy, our kind of grit, and 
our kind of common sense. You must go forward 
on the road of industrial progress, creating new 
problems as fast as you solve old, treading down and 
obHterating landmarks as fast as you set up new 
ones ; but we must live our own Hfe of pastoral 
simpHcity, moving more slowly, content to see fresh 
horizons when God reveals them, attempting to 
solve only those ancient problems which frustrate 
the growth and mar the beauty of man's soul. 
Leave us to that. We shall be then no hindrance 
to your progress. And perhaps some of the states- 
men of your new democracy may occasionally pay 
us a visit to see how an old-fashioned people, follow- 
ing in the footsteps of its ancestors, manages the 
business of human Hfe. 

" BeHeve me, we wish you no harm. Most cheer- 
fully shall we send you our milk and butter, our 
eggs and bacon, our cabbages and potatoes ; and 
always most deHghtfuUy shall we welcome you 



THE BISHOP'S DREAM 59 

to our shores when you are in need of quiet and 
repose ! 

" Am I a dreamer ? Well, when you are in Belfast 
perhaps you may think so. But go among our 
peasants ; sit by their peat-fires, stand in their 
gardens, visit their cowsheds, walk through their 
fields, and you will find that I do not dream. And 
do remember, when you are in Belfast, that some- 
thing Hke 70 per cent of Ireland's population is 
engaged, directly or indirectly, in agriculture, and 
that only 30 per cent is industrial. My dream is 
the aspiration of the Irish people," 



CHAPTER III 

THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

" OO many people in England," said the little 
^ Bishop, "beheve the legend of Roman 
CathoHc intolerance, that I should like you to 
take a walk through this town and make your 
own inquiries of the shopkeepers. You will find 
that all the principal shops are kept by Protestants." 
The town is Cathohc ; it is situated in the centre 
of an agricultural district which is almost entirely 
CathoHc. The Protestants are numbered by tens, 
the CathoHcs by thousands. 

It is one of those half-sleepy and half-dreamy 
towns which a man in a motor-car regards with 
Ufted eyebrows and a bored contempt — only in- 
terested if he has to lunch there, and then mightily 
depressed. Except on market-days, when pic- 
turesque peasants throng its narrow pavements 
and crowd its little shops, when every conceivable 
kind of vehicle and every possible specimen of 
horse and donkey get themselves into inextricable 
confusion in the one long curving street, when old 
women, with old baskets over their arms and old 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 61 

hooded cloaks over their heads, tramp in from far- 
away villages to do their week's marketing, and 
when fox-hke looking men, long-Hpped, small-eyed, 
and whiskered, flourishing long sticks and shouting 
uninteUigible maledictions, urge cows, sheep, pigs, 
and goats through the crowd — only then does the 
town open its eyes quite wide, raise its nodding 
head, puU down its waistcoat, settle its collar, and 
reaHze the existence of mankind. 

Not beautiful, not ancient, and not really pic- 
turesque, there is nevertheless something ingratiat- 
ing and restful in this drowsy town. It is of a size 
which makes for human intercourse. Everybody 
knows everybody, and as there are two of everybody 
in particular, existence is saved from dullness and 
stagnation. One is conscious of a ruffle of com- 
petition. There are certainly two doctors, as cer- 
tainly two soHcitors, as certainly two bank-managers, 
as certainly two priests, and if not two bishops at 
least a sufficiency of clerical aggressiveness on 
the part of Protestants to temper the episcopal 
monopoly of the CathoHc bishop. 

Moreover, there are certain representatives of 
the EngHsh " garrison " Hving tea-party, gardening, 
and Diana Hves in villages close at hand, so that 
the Httle town is not without a touch of aristocracy, 
a breath of culture. One hkes to see the brougham 
of Sir Thomas pulled up before the poulterer's door, 
to see the Colonel's dog-cart and the Colonel's eye- 



62 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

glass come grandly round the corner, and to see Miss 
Priscilla and Master George walking their ponies over 
the cobbles, their eyes directed to the tuck-shops. 

Now, will you beheve it — wiU you believe it after 
all you have read in Orange pamphlets and Unionist 
newspapers— will you beUeve that aU the chief shops 
of this market-town are kept by Protestants and are 
supported by Cathohcs ? A gentlemanly and blushing 
young Methodist, presiding over the counter of a 
flourishing grocery stores, informed me that he 
had the Bishop on his books, most of the Cathohc 
priests, and a very satisfactory percentage of the 
Cathohc population. He said the Catholics were 
by far his most numerous customers. 

" Why do we deal with these Protestants, why 
don't we go to our own Cathohc grocers ? " asked the 
Bishop. " The answer is very simple ; it is not 
in the least Satanic ! We go to the Protestant shops, 
Ijecause the Protestant shopkeepers are better men 
of business than the Catholic shopkeepers. They 
give us better value for our money. We are very 
glad indeed to have such excellent business-men 
serving the bodily needs of the community. We 
do not inquire to what church they belong or to 
which pohtical party they give their votes ; we 
judge them by their prices, the quaUty of their 
goods, and the honesty of their dealings. They are 
a very estimable body of people. We like them 
and we respect them." 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 63 

The true character of what is called the Re- 
Hgious Difficulty may be gathered from the follow- 
ing incident, which occurred in quite another town 
situated in quite another district of the south of 
Ireland. 

This town, one might almost say, is exclusively 
CathoHc, as it is hotly and overwhelmingly Home 
Rule. A manager of one of the two banks began 
to make his preparations for retirement, and the 
second-in-command began to make his dispositions 
for obtaining the managership. But he was in a 
difficulty. For he was not a Home Ruler, and he 
was not a Roman CathoHc. It seemed impossible 
to suppose that the directors of the bank would 
appoint a manager so unHkely to prosper their 
business. But he took courage, knowing the kind- 
ness of his cHents, and went among the chief people 
of the town asking if they would support his 
apphcation. He met with not one single refusal. 
Everybody he asked signed his appHcation, and he 
obtained the post. 

Two CathoHcs in the town, speaking to me of this 
bank manager, used almost identical words. One 

of them said : " Mr. is a gentleman, a real 

gentleman ; there's nothing I wouldn't do to obHge 
him." The other : " We would aU do anything 

for Mr. , because he's a true gentleman." 

Neither of them could tell me whether he was 
Home Ruler or Unionist. 



64 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

The bank manager himself said to me : "It is 
quite certain I should never have got the post if I 
had been a Unionist poHtician ; but my reUgion 
made no difficulty at all. My experience of Catholics 
is this : they do not ask what a man beHeves in 
reHgion, but they object to a man, Catholic or 
Protestant, who is opposed to the nationaL demand 
for Home Rule. I have never, in the whole course 
of my experience, come across one single instance of 
CathoHc intolerance." 

As I walked with the Httle Bishop beside the 
little shops of his Httle town, I told him of this bank 
manager, and he said to me, with a charming smile, 
taking my arm with an impulse of the friendhest 
goodwill : " We are really not monsters ! I assure 
you, whatever our shortcomings, we are not so 
black as we are painted ! What the bank manager 
said to you is probably true — ^he would not have 
got his comfortable house and his larger salary if 
he had been an active poHtician on the Unionist side. 
Whenever you hear of CathoHes opposing the 
advancement of a Protestant to some more or less 
pubHc position, you may be perfectly certain that 
the reason is poHtical. They might oppose a 
Protestant who mocked and maligned their re- 
Hgion ; but never — ^in the case of an able and 
honest man — one who used charity to his religious 
neighbours and either supported Home Rule or kept 
his Unionism for his private Hfe. I am perfectly 




Photo. Mason, Dublin. 



A TYPICAL TOWN. 




Photo. Mason, Duhlin. 



AN OVERFLOW AT MASS. 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 66 

certain that when Home Rule comes, a very large 
number of representatives from the south of Ire- 
land will be Protestant men of business, Protestant 
men of position — ^in fact, that very class which 
would now be sitting in the House of Commons if 
they were NationaHsts." 

He suggested that I should see something of 
CathoHc education in an agricultural town, and 
I was accordingly taken to the big school close to 
the modest house where his lordship lives with a 
single servant to look after his needs. 

It was interesting to see the effect produced by 
his entrance. To begin with, at sight of him the 
scholars all dropped upon one knee, while the 
master, or mistress, hurriedly advanced, and, 
kneeling, kissed the episcopal ring. The Bishop, 
who is a democrat and a startUng innovator, almost 
in the same breath as he gave his blessing, told 
the children to rise and began asking them ques- 
tions. And one saw that the kneeHng was but 
a ceremony, a mediaeval courtesy which has alto- 
gether lost anything it may have once possessed of 
serviHty or fear. The children's faces were soon 
bright with smiles, the Bishop's loud laugh rang 
through the rooms, and master, or mistress, entered 
with accustomed pleasure, completely at their ease, 
but always respectful, into his badinage. 

The children, with but very few exceptions, were 
fat and weU-looking, their bodies clothed with 



66 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

stubborn homespun and their feet excessively shod 
with lasting leather. Here and there a pale child, 
barefoot and ragged, struck a tragic note, told of 
drunken parents, and witnessed to the misery of 
poverty. But such children, I observed, were 
placed nearest to the stove, and seemed to be on 
perfectly good terms with the well-dressed children 
of prosperous tradesmen. 

In these Catholic schools there is a refreshing 
absence of class-feeling, of money differences, of 
blighting snobbishness. 

" WeU, young giant," said the Bishop, tapping 
a Httle stump of a boy on the shoulder, " what are 
you going to be when you grow up ? " " Soldier, 
sir." " Soldier ! Why a soldier ? " " So as I can 
fight the English," replied the boy, at which Bishop, 
schoolmaster, and class burst into bountiful laughter. 
" Fight the EngHsh ! " I said reprovingly ; " why, 
they're going to give you Home Rule. Why not 

fight the ? " naming a most charming nation 

on the Continent. The Httle pugiUst regarded me 
with perplexity ; I was Double Dutch to his under- 
standing. "Want to fight the EngHsh," he mut- 
tered stubbornly. 

The Bishop said to me : " Properly dressed up, 
what a story for the Orange pamphleteer ! A whole 
schoolful of tremendous big boys drilling to over- 
throw the British Empire ! " 

We visited the convent-school, where a beautiful 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 67 

Reverend Mother in voluminous garments of black 
that seemed to fizz and crackle as she knelt to kiss 
the Bishop's ring, guided us with a merry good- 
humour through the bright and speckless house. 

In one of the class-rooms a Bible lesson was pro- 
ceeding. " What ! " cried the Bishop, wheeling 
round upon me with an expression of simulated 
shock ; " teaching the Bible ! and in the vernacular ! 
How terrible ! Did you ever know of such wicked- 
ness ? " And then leaving me to my smiles, he 
whipped round to the class, and began asking ques- 
tions suggested by the Bible lesson. 

" All sin is wicked," he said ; " that is so, is it 
not ? " " Yes, my lord," in treble chorus, from 
young ladies with pinafores and hair-ribbons. 
" Yes, and all sin is distressing to God, all sin : isn't 
that so ? " " Yes, my lord." " But there are 
degrees of sin : some sins are worse than other 
sins." " Yes, my lord." " Now, stealing is a sin, 
but it is not so great a sin as murder : that is so, 
is it not ? " " Yes, my lord." " Murder is a terrible 
sin ? " " Yes, my lord." " A very terrible sin ? " 
" Yes, my lord." " Now, is there any worse sin than 
murder ? " Silence, hesitation among pinafores 
and hair-ribbons. " Think a moment ; is there any 
worse sin than killing a human being ? " One shy 
hand timidly hfted. " Well, you tell us ; come now, 
don't be shy, tell us what is a greater sin than mur- 
der." " Please, my lord, perjury." " Quite right, 



68 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

quite right ; and can you tell us why perjury is a 
greater sin than murder ? Speak up, now." After 
a tremendous moment of breath-drawing — " Be- 
cause, my lord, murder is sin against man, but 
perjury is sin against God." The Bishop trium- 
phantly : " Do you see, girls ? Perjury is a greater 
sin, because he who commits it tries to make God 
a partner of his sin. He calls God to witness to a lie. 
God is all truth. And the perjurer tries to make 
Him a liar. Perjury is a spiritual sin, the most awful 
sin we can commit. Very well, then. Good-bye, 
girls. God bless you." 

And in the next room the Bishop demands : 
" Now how many girls had stirabout for breakfast 
this morning ? " Titters and confusion from this 
elegant class of young ladies almost marriageable. 
" What, only one ! Shameful ! Dreadful ! WeU, 
now let us see : how many had tea ? " A general 
uprising of elegant hands and slender arms. " Ap- 
palling ! " cries the Bishop ; " oh, shocking, 
shocking ! " Laughter, simpering, and naughty 
whispering among the fiUies. " Well," says the 
Bishop, " although tea cannot compare with good 
porridge it is a pardonable sin — ^but remember, only 
pardonable when it is freshly made. Now, who 
can tell me why stewed tea is bad ? " A blushing 
maid volunteers : " Because tea contains tannin." 
" And what is tannin used f or ? " " For hardening 
leather." " Quite right ; so if you don't want to 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 69 

have stomachs as tough as leather you won't drink 
stewed tea, will you ? " Then he explains, smihng 
and gracious, that poor people in Ireland lose their 
teeth and their appetites, become wretched and 
feeble, because they destroy their digestions with 
horrid black stewed tea. 

The Reverend Mother whispers to me with a 
tolerant smile : " The Bishop is always going on 
about stewed tea. It's one of his fads. But he 
reaUy has made a great difference in the habits of 
the people — ^he is always teUing them about open 
windows, milk, cleanhness, and proper cooking. 
He's a regular reformer ! " 

Now I would hke you to know that the Sisters 
teaching in this school were very nice and very 
cheerful people. Their eyes had that unfathomable 
depth of maternal kindness and that pleasing 
twinkle of quizzical amusement which is charac- 
teristic of the Irish woman ; and their bright faces 
shone as if a cake of soap had been used with the 
vigour of a housemaid's hearthstone ; and their 
Unen was as white as snow, and their black garments 
had the shine and rustle of a Genevan gown in the 
evangehcal pulpit of a wealthy congregation ; and 
everything about them suggested alacrity, health, 
energy, enthusiasm, and contentment. Not one of 
them gave me the impression of the paid teacher 
who is bored by her task and regards her pupils 
as the guilty cause of her spinsterhood. Not one 



70 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

of them seemed likely to terrorize young children 
or to make religion detestable. 

In these schools I had a feeling of the town's 
future, the nation's morrow. Outside the walls, 
in the pleasant sunshine and the drowsy hum 
of the morning, men and women were at work with 
worldly business — ^the peasant sowing, the shop- 
keeper selling, the housewife preparing dinner, the 
carpenter building, the cobbler hammering on his 
last, the smith making his anvil ring, and the 
merchant weighing a speculation. And here, 
provided with all the necessaries of existence, were 
those who some day would be bearing the burden 
of the town's prosperity, who would themselves be 
the money-getters and the corn-growers and the 
bootmakers, and the mothers of posterity. Some- 
thing so sweet and tender and intelligent in these 
children seemed to assure me that the town's future 
and the nation's morrow, enlightened by education 
and consecrated by reHgion, would be happier and 
richer. ... 

One of the doctors in this town was kind enough 
to take me on a visit of inspection to the infirmary. 
Here, too, I found Sisters of Mercy in charge of the 
patients — ^gentle, merry, and tender-hearted women 
with whom it was a pleasure, almost a tonic, to 
come in contact. Need I say that the wards were 
wonderfully clean and bright ? 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 71 

I shall never forget as long as I live some of the 
patients in this hospital. We came to a bed on 
which a little human form turned upon its side 
was discernible by the humped shape of the huddled 
bed-clothes. Going round to the further side of the 
bed, I saw upon the pillow the oldest face I have 
ever seen — a skull covered with wasting wax-like 
skin, the Hds of cavernous eyes fast closed, the 
line of the sunken mouth just visible in the midst of 
infinite wrinkles, the aquiline nose shrunken to 
the Hkeness of a bird's beak. 

As if she were a mother speaking of her child, the 
Sister said to me : " He's such a dear old man ! " 

" How old is he ? " I asked. 

" Over ninety. And the poor old fellow has been 
lying Hke that for nearly five years. He is quite bed- 
ridden. He will never leave his bed. He just dozes 
and sleeps all the day, and all the night. And he 
never complains ; he is just waiting for God to take 
him," 

I felt a shock of horror, looking at the ancient in 
his sleep and striving to imagine such a doom for 
myself, five years in bed, five years in one position, 
five years of waiting for release. 

There were very old women in these wards, and 
little children, and men dying visibly and swiftly of 
consumption. And there were men about the 
place who bore no likeness to humanity ; soulless 
creatures, misshapen, misfeatured, hideous to the 



72 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

eye, repellent to the mind — ^idiots and degener- 
ates. 

The doctor said to me : " There is a movement 
to have the Sisters supplanted by trained hospital 
nurses. But will all the training in the world give 
nurses to poor men Hke these, as kind, as gentle, 
and as sympathetic as the Sisters who now wait upon 
them for the love of God ? For myself, I doubt it. 
Religion, it seems to me, ought to play a great part 
in the nursing of the poor." 

I went a motor-drive with this doctor, and he told 
me among other things that Mr. Lloyd George was 
the most infamous man in the whole world. He 

made no exception, not even . As politely as 

I could, and as diplomatically — ^for it is never quite 
safe to defend the Chancellor of the Exchequer before 
his enemies, and on this occasion I was a Saxon in 
a Celtic motor-car — ^I hinted that Mr. George is 
really not so entirely devihsh, so unreservedly in 
league with Satan, as the purest, most pious, and 
most cultured classes of the community are un- 
fortunately disposed to imagine. But the doctor 
swept my feeble straw- works of defence to one side, 
and charged over the prostrate body of my de- 
bihtated loyalty with a sword-like flash of indigna- 
tion and contempt. 

" I will tell you what he has done," quoth he ; 
** then, you shall judge for yourself. He has made 
my life a heill. He has made ev&ry doctor's life a 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 73 

hell. Since his eruption — the devil take his soul ! — 
there is not a doctor in the land whose Hfe " 

" You are speaking of the Insurance Act. Well, 
you must remem " 

" I am not speaking of the Insurance Act at aU, 
at all ! I'm speaking of Old Age Pensions." 

And then the doctor, laughing deHghtedly at my 
discomfiture, proceeded to teU me how he is now 
sent for at every hour of the night, and called out 
of his motor at every mile of his way during the day- 
time, by people anxious and alarmed over nothing in 
the least serious which has happened, or is, they 
think, about to happen, to grandfather and grand- 
mother. 

" Where family affection did not exist before," 
said the doctor, " your Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer has created it ; and where it did exist, he 
has developed and intensified it to a degree which 
doctors find utterly insupportable. It is really 
inhuman ! One might almost say that a main em- 
ployment of the peasants nowadays is to keep their 
old people alive. That five shiUings a week has 
worked a revolution. But, on my honour, the 
blessing has tremendously increased a country 
doctor's work." 

He spoke of other revolutions. 

" The change," said he, " made by the Land 
Act is little short of amazing. It used to be the 
hardest thing in the world to get the peasants 



74 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

to live in a sanitary way. I have brow-beaten them 
hundreds, thousands of times, for keeping animals 
in their cabins, for having their roofs out of repair, 
for leaving their broken windows unmended, for 
the general beastliness and horror of their homes. 
But it was always in vain. ' Och, docther dear ! ' 
they would exclaim ; ' sure, we are so poor we 
can't afford it ! ' And so the thing went on. Sick- 
ness, disease, epidemics, death. It simply broke 
one's heart. But now — God bless you, it's the 
hardest thing in the world to find a reaUy dis- 
reputable cottage. The animals hve outside ; the 
thatch is kept in good order ; the interiors are 
beautifully clean ; and the people wear decent 
clothes. You would never know them for the same 
peasantry. And all this change is due to the Land 
Act. In the old days, if they built a pig-sty, if 
they mended their roofs, if they went to church in 
anything but shabby rags, the landlord's agent 
raised the rent. They simply could not afford 
to be self-respecting, sanitary, and ambitious. 
It was too expensive. English people don't reahze 
that. AU the dirt and squalor of the Irish peasant 
was hterally created by insatiable landlords." 

As the doctor told me of these matters I recalled 
one of the most striking, and one of the most terrible 
passages in Henry George's Progress and Poverty. 
Do you remember the words in which he imagines 
a universal ciy of humanity to the Creator, and 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 76 

shows how the answer to that cry, the merciful and 
miraculous answer, would be of no avail ? 

" In the very centre of our civiHzation to-day 
are want and suffering enough to make sick at 
heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel 
his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and 
ask Him to relieve it ? Supposing the prayer were 
heard, and at the behest with which the universe 
sprang into being there should glow in the sun 
a greater power ; new virtue fiU the air ; fresh 
vigour the soil ; that for every blade of grass 
that now grows two should spring up, and the 
seed that now increases fiftyfold should increase 
a hundredfold ! Would poverty be abated or want 
relieved ? Manifestly no ! . . . Landowners would 
alone be benefited. Rents would increase, but 
wages would stiU tend to the starvation point ! " 

The abohtion of landlordism in Ireland — without 
the miracle of a more bountiful earth — has worked an 
absolute revolution in Ireland. It has transformed 
the peasantry. The simple pleasures of these kindly 
and industrious people have been increased, their 
joy in work has become intensified, and the beauty 
of their home-Hfe is now glad and confident, without 
shadow, and without fear. 

This Act, which is buying out the Irish landlords, 
commits an appalling blunder in conferring the 
land for all time upon the descendants of those 



76 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

who by mere accident are its present occupiers — 
a blunder so colossal that it sickens the brain to 
think that it was committed in the full light of day- 
thirty years after Henry George had demonstrated 
the salvation of State Ownership ; nevertheless, in 
getting rid of tyrannous landlords, in setting up a 
race of homesteaders, and in giving fixity of tenure 
to the peasants of an agricultural country, it has 
compassed a social revolution. The greatest credit 
is due to Lord Dunraven for his conception of 
this measure, and to Mr. George Wyndham for 
its conduct through the House of Commons. 
Modern Ireland dates from the passing of that 
Act. 

" I must tell you an amusing story," said the 
doctor. " I was rung up pretty late one night by a 
peasant from an outlying village, fifteen miles away. 
It was in the days before I had a car. The wind 
was blowing horribly, the rain was sweeping against 
the house, and it was deadly cold. The peasant 
asked me, rather shamefacedly, if I would come 
and see his mother. I invited him to come in ; I 
gave him a glass of whisky. ' Patrick,' I said, 
' your mother is a very old woman.' ' I know that, 
doctor,' he admitted. ' She's over eighty, Patrick.' 
' She is aU that, doctor.' 'And nothing that I could do 
to-night would be of the smallest use to her.' ' Sure 
doctor,' said he, ' I know very well it's the truth 
you're telling me ; but me poor mother, do you 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 77 

see, would have me come and fetch you because 
she does not want to die a natural death.' " 

Another story the doctor told me. One of 
his patients, brought to death's door, had a long talk 
with the priest. On the following day he said to 
the doctor with extraordinary animation, " Doctor 
dear, that Father Murphy's a very strange man ; 
I'm thinking he's out of his mind altogether ! " 
" Out of his mind ! " exclaimed the doctor ; " not 
at aU ! Father Murphy is a most able and sensible 

man. Why, whatever makes you think " 

" Wait now, till I tell you, doctor dear. I was ask- 
ing him, do you see, about the Protestants, asking 
him what would happen to them at the Judgment 
Day ; and I said, said I, that it was a terrible 
lot of people to go aU at once into hell. And what 
think you he said, doctor dear — this Father Murphy? 
Can you imagine it ? Will you beheve it ? He said 
to me, and it's God's truth I'm teUing you, doctor, 
that maybe Protestants wouldn't go to hell at all, 
at aU, that many of them, to his certain knowledge, 
stood just as fine a chance of getting into heaven as 
CathoHcs ! That's what he said, doctor. He said 
that. He did, doctor dear. If it's the last word I 
speak, that's what Father Murphy said to me. 
Doctor dear, the man's mad. To teU me that, 
and me a dying man ! I said to him, ' Father 
Murphy,' says I, ' if it is possible for Protestants to 
go to heaven, can you tell me then, I says, why 



78 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

should I have been a CathoHc all my life ? ' Och, 
but sure the man's out of his mind ! " 

While the doctor told these stories he steered 
his motor-car through some of the most beautiful 
and romantic scenery in Ireland. Our road lay 
far from the market-town: now winding with a 
wooded river through cool and gentle valleys ; now 
climbing into heathered hiUs, over sandy moorland ; 
now skirting the side of steadfast lakes dropped 
like mirrors on the earth by clouds so beautiful 
that they died to see themselves ; now jolting over 
rugged tracks through fields of pasture and tillage 
to the creeper-covered dwelling of a farmer or the 
new rate-built cottage of a labourer, and now creep- 
ing quietly along the scarred and suffering face of 
the cHff, with the setting sun flashing a pilgrim's 
path of golden illusion to the land of dollars. 

It was delightful to dismount from the car, and 
go with the doctor into the houses of the peasants. 
One obtained in this way memorable glimpses of 
Httle interiors where one seemed to see the very 
soul of Ireland smihng at the hearth of Irish life. 
The invincible neatness of these homes — these 
humble, human village shrines — ^their bewitching 
cheerfulness and content, the sweetness of the 
people, the air of prosperity and simple happiness, 
which came from all of them, made not only a most 
charming impression, but brought one into real 
and intimate communion with the Irish heart. 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 79 

Nearly every modern cottage has now an acre, 
or half an acre, of land surrounding it, and — 
however plain the architecture, however relentless 
the red of the bricks — set in the midst of this 
ample kindly garden each cottage greets one with 
a graceful sense of Arcady. One knows that potatoes 
will soon be thrusting their dull green leaves and 
spreading their white and Hlac-coloured flowers 
over the tilled earth; that the necks of excited 
hens will soon be thrust through the battens of the 
coops wriggHng for sight of certain wandering balls 
of down on legs of gelatine ; that orchestral squeak- 
ings will mingle from the sty with the deeper 
gruntings of content now sleepily audible; that 
canary creeper will be clambering over the lattice 
of the porch, and a hum of bees will sound above 
the buzzings of summer flies at the open cottage 
door through which the sun will be slanting. 

But it is the older cottage, generally set by the 
roadside, the little, white-washed, one-storied, 
straw-thatched cottage that one most loves to 
penetrate. In these dim cabins, the peat seems to 
bum with a redder glow and to diffuse a warmer, 
richer incense : the smoky rafters seem to have 
a visible hospitaHty, a discernible spirit of shelter 
and protection : the humble waUs, covered with 
pictures of the Saviour and St. Mary, seem as if 
they have caught a sense of blessing and consecra- 
tion from a hundred years of family affection. 



80 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

And the cooking utensils look as if they have 
given joy on many a winter night to the tired half- 
frozen father returning from the fields; the china 
on the dresser looks as if it has been poHshed for 
centuries by Httle maids conscious of enormous 
responsibihty and of intense pride in the work of 
helping mother ; the chairs look as if they have been 
drawn to the fireside on a thousand occasions for 
happy gossip and domestic festivities ; and the 
poor old sombre bed sprawHng on the floor in a dark 
corner, very shapeless and depressed, and if truth 
be told rather spongy, grimy, and squaHd, looks as 
if the new souls born upon it and the old souls 
parting from it, generation after generation, have 
touched it with the mysteries of birth" and death. 

One meets in these cottages very old, shrunken, 
bent-over people, toothless and inarticulate, middle- 
aged, disenchanted, but courageous people, and 
young girls so beautiful, so fresh, so innocent, so 
shy, that they lay, as it were, an awe upon the 
soul of a stranger. But one sees seldom in these 
cc^ttage homes young men at the threshold of 
life. 

What kindness we received on our visits ! How 
glad the people were to see the doctor ! How 
pretty it was to watch him in talk with wide-eyed, 
blushing girls, or bending over the pillow of some 
smiling patriarch ! And when the dark fell, and we 
were delayed on the road with trouble to our lamps. 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 81 

how willingly, and with what gracious courtesy, 
help came from a wayside cottage ! 

We went to a corner of the coast, where a thousand 
httle isles floated mist-wrapt on moonht waves that 
scarcely seemed to move, and here we stood for a 
few minutes looking towards Cape Clear while the 
doctor recited poetry in a low voice and the car 
that we had left behind us purred in a low mono- 
tone to the innumerable stars. 

And then, at a great pace, with the cold wind in 
our teeth, and the golden ring round the moon 
deepening to orange, we sped through silent and 
sylvan country back to the market-town. 

The Bishop had been obhged to go away that 
morning, and a priest was to come in and act host 
for me at the dinner-table. I found him waiting for 
me, a short, fat, rigid, high-shouldered, low-necked, 
red-faced, top-heavy man, whose immense and mas- 
sive head — ^with its two Httle staring brown eyes deep 
buried in hard-hammered bone, and its Uttle button 
of a mouth squeezed up to nothing under a nose like 
a blob of putty — seemed as if it had been shaped, 
roughly and impatiently shaped, out of granite by 
some Titan sick of Grecian prettiness. I never saw 
head so soHd, dense, thick, and neckless on the 
squared, high shoulders of a body so brief and rigid. 

Now I must teU you that every CathoHc bishop 
who entertained me provided in my honour Gar- 
gantuan meals and battalions of bottles. Poor, 



82 THE LIFE OF A TOWN 

humble, and simple in their habits, these warm- 
hearted people deHght to load and overload their 
tables for the entertainment of a stranger. 

So it came about that when the door opened and 
the housekeeper, having removed an excellent 
soup, came in with a great dish of smoking beef, 
then with a fizzHng pair of roast chickens, then 
with a steaming roU of boiled bacon, then with 
potatoes in their jackets, cabbages cooked to a 
turn, onions that filled the fireht room with the 
rich and genial odours of a kitchen, and finally 
with a bottle of champagne that looked as if it had 
been corked and labelled only that very morning — 
it came about, I repeat, that my Httle, fat, high- 
shouldered host, whose eyes had been gradually 
blazing, whose httle round lips were Hterally smack- 
ing with dehght, and who seemed, indeed, as he put 
a terrific edge upon a mighty knife, as if he were 
snorting and pawing the ground to be off, was 
swept to a very zenith of stupefaction. 

It was, I think, the appearance of the bottle 
of champagne, brought so calmty to the table by 
the pale and perspiring housekeeper, that blew him 
finally clean into the empyrean. 

He sat suddenly bolt upright, knife and sharpener 
paralysed in mid-air, raised his huge head, regarded 
the housekeeper with an absolute increduhty, and 
demanded : " What ! Champagne ! Juha, are 
we to have champagne ? " 



THE LIFE OF A TOWN 83 

" Yes, Father ; his lordship said so ; and — ^the 
liqueurs as well." 

His shoulders went with a great thump against 
the back of his chair. Then, coming to himself, 
he exclaimed with a most fervent gratitude, a 
most genuine piety, his extraordinary face almost 
rigid with solemnity : " Glory be to God ! " 

At the next moment carving-fork and carving- 
knife were plunged into the ribs of beef, and my 
host was puffing and blowing at his work in a 
manner that made conversation seem a trivial, 
foolish thing. 



CHAPTER IV 
TESTIMONIES 

I WAS talking one day to a brisk and voluble 
woman of business who entertains the very 
clearest notions on the reHgious question. She spoke 
to me with a whispering suggestion of mystery, now 
tapping my arm, or affectionately fingering one of 
my coat buttons, and now stepping back to regard 
the effect of her words on my sympathetic face. 
Occasionally she almost threw herself upon my 
bosom in the excess of her confidence, or in the 
exuberance of her matchless verbosity ; and occa- 
sionally she caught my forearm to support herself 
in a nip of laughter. A tubby, fat, elderly lady, 
shrewd and capable, famous for the success of a 
rather unique estabUshment. 

" Och, sure, there's bigotry in the north of 
Ireland," she told me, " but it isn't reHgious bigotry 
at all. Look, sir, I'll teU you what it is ; 'tis just 
black-hearted bigotry. Thim Protestants have 
any God's quantity of money, and they dispise 
thim that haven't it. 'Tis that, sir, and 'tis nothing 
more. Och, they're terrible ! Look, sir ! — they 

84 



TESTIMONIES 86 

wouldn't spit on you, if you'll pardon the expression, 
even if you was on fire ; no, they wouldn't. Och, 
they're a dirty, proud, black-hearted lot ; and it's 
God's truth I'm teUing you ; och, but it's terrible. 
You ought to see thim Protestants, so you did, 
driving with their motor-cars into the big towns, 
making a kick-up and all, and staring at poor folks, 
my dear darhng sir, with such a look as they'd 
be sorry to die with. And how do they do it ? 
Och, sure, they couldn't do it all if it wasn't for 
paying the people who works for thim the wages 
of poverty. Ten shillings a week ! HaK a crown for 
girls ! Och, but it's terrible. Glory be to God, 
but that's true. Me own husband, sir — she'll soon 
be eight months dead, poor man — ^how did they 
treat him then ? Och, 'tis the devil's own shame. 
Sure, sir, they came to me, his poor widow, and 
him hardly cold in his coffin, and demanded six 
hundred pounds of repairs on the house if I wanted 
to go on with the lease. It was that, sir, or I had 
to go into the streets without a house to me head. 
And what sort of property do they own ? Och, 
'tis nothing but dirty slums with a smell to 'em, 
my dear darhng sir, that would scratch the very 
bottom of a decent stomach, yes, it would. Me 
own sister's son, sir, look at him then. He caught 
diphtheria in a tramcar from a man they call Shamus 
Dwyer, who was just out of hospital ; and he was 
in hospital, me poor nephew was, for six weeks; 



86 TESTIMONIES 

and when he came out of hospital, look you, sir, he 
passed a boy they call WiUiam McGifferty, and he 
caught the scarlet fever from him. Now, in the 
name of God, is that rehgion, then ? Whist, 
there's no rehgion about it at aU. Look, sir, I 
know one of thim Protestant families in the North, 
great folks, and I'll tell you what I've seen in their 
house with me own eyes as God is my Judge. 
There's a picture in the Hbrary, just at the side of 
the door as you go in, and 'tis a priest, sir, in his 
full vestments as I'm a living woman, saying the 
Mass ! It's there to this day, sir. Look at that 
now. It's God's truth I'm teUing you. Och, but it's 
terrible. And phwat do you think of this? One 
of their ladies, sir — such a poor and meagre soul 
ye niver saw since God made ye, and dressed up 
with her silk stockings that cost a fortune, and 
shoes and petticoats the saints would have blushed 
to see, a kind of a dandy woman, and ugly, my 
dear darhng sir, you never saw an ugHer, flat- 
chested, yellow-faced old harridan in your born 
days ; och, terrible ! told me, sir, she told me her 
very self as true as I'm a Hving woman that she 
was only waiting for her husband to die to have 
a real grand time of it — look at that now ! You must 
excuse me laughing ! Och, 'twould have spHt 
a herring to hear of it ! When her husband died, 
sir, the money was tied up as tight as a whelk ! 
She was worse off than when he was a hving man ! 



TESTIMONIES 87 

Och, you should have seen her weeds, they was 
shameful for a virtuous woman. 

" They talk of rehgion, but, my dear sir, the 
North's full of Home Rule. Faith, but it's the 
same aU the world over. Och, sure ! You can't 
live in the country and not see the need of it. 
Thim Protestants are a hard people. Grasping 
people, they are. Faith, they'd squeeze the blood 
out of a brick. And the pride of thim, the sinful 
pride ! Maybe you saw it in the paper and maybe 
you didn't, but in one of the Ulster towns, just a 
little time ago, the Catholics made a J.P. of a bill- 
poster ! Och, you nivir heard such a cry-out ! 
I think his name was Jerry O'Meara — a decent, 
honest, well-Hked sort of a feUow, but going round 
with his paste-pot and brush. The Resident Magis- 
trate was a Protestant colonel, and one day he was 
sentencing a man for being drunk, when a little 
meek voice says at the side of him, ' I object to the 
sintince, it's too hard for the ofiince.' He was a 
very fierce-looking man, the magistrate, and he 
wore a glass that made him worse than he was, 
and he turns round of a sudden, and he scowls like 
the very divil himself, *And who are you ? ' he asks 
in a voice of thunder. And thin, smiling like a 
cherub, and speaking as meek as a lamb, Jerry 
says, * A'm O'Meara, the Jah Pee ! ' Faith, sir, 
the whole court burst into a fit of laughter and 
the poor magistrate dropped his glass and looked as 



88 TESTIMONIES 

poor as a piece of bread on the end of a toasting- 
fork. 

" Och, but there's good men among the Protes- 
tants. I'm not sajdng they're all given to the 
divil ; not at all. Look, sir, there's one or two of 
the sort up in County Derry who might have been sent 
by Heaven to help poor people. Good landlords, 
good Christian people. But why is it ? Faith, sir, 
they know there's a God above thim. That's how 
it is. And if they're not for Home Rule, they're not 
very far off of it, and you'U nivir hear of thim saying 
cruel things of the poor CathoHcs, and you'U 
nivir hear of thim oppressing any human creature 
on the earth, Protestant or CathoUc. 

" I say this, sir. Why can't people leave other 
people alone ? Why should they always be wanting 
to interfere ? Faith, a man's religion is born with 
him, and he can't help himself. And it isn't what 
a man says he beheves that makes a pennyworth 
of difference ; it's just how he hves. Do you think 
God spends all His time Hstening to the arguments 
of the Protestants. Not at all ! Not at all ! Sure, 
God Almighty doesn't care what we think ; it's the 
heart of a man He'd have clean and sweet ; and 
I say a Catholic may have a bad heart and a Protes- 
tant may have a good heart, and it's helping people, 
being kind to people, that gets a soul into heaven 
when all's said and done. So why do they always 
go arguing and sniffing at poor CathoHcs ? Isn't 



TESTIMONIES 89 

it enough for thim that they've got the blood- 
money out of working people, and ride in their 
motor-cars, and go to a town I know very well, 
which 'tis nothing more than a bad place, a kind 
of a rendezvous, you understand me — och, 'tis 
a terrible place. Wouldn't it be better, my dear 
darUng sir, if we had Home Rule, and a Uttle 
peace and quiet, and all set about helping those that 
are poor and in the want of things ? That's how 
I look at it. And as for rehgious bigotry, sure, sir, 
I teU ye, there's no such thing ; 'tis nothing more 
than a proud stomach." 

A less impassioned and perhaps a more informing 
presentation of this great matter was offered to me 
by a Protestant man of business in a pretty con- 
siderable town of the south of Ireland — such a 
town as the lady above would surely call " a kind 
of a rendezvous." 

He is a man some sixty years of age, a spare, 
Hthe, grey-headed figure, lean-faced, grey-eyed, 
grey-bearded, the colour of his skin a tinge of grey, 
the note of the whole man vigorous, alert, trench- 
ant. All his life he has hved in Ireland, and all 
his hfe he has avoided poKtics. He is first and 
foremost a successful, keen, ambitious, and enter- 
prising man of business. 

He laughed away the suggestion that under 
Home Rule Ireland would become a difficult coimtry 
for Protestants. 



90 TESTIMONIES 

" I assure you," he told me, " the Catholics of 
Ireland are the kindest-hearted and the pleasantest 
people in the world. I prefer them infinitely, 
infinitely^ to the people of my own religion. In 
fact, so narrow, and bigoted, and pohtical are the 
Protestants of this town that I now very seldom 
go to church ; I find myself every year more and 
more drawn towards the Cathohcs. I have often 
thought that I am in danger of seceding. But 
like a great many other people here, I'm drawn to 
Cathohcs and repelled by Cathohc dogma. I hke 
Catholics immensely, but I cannot bring myself 
to swaUow what they teach. As for Catholic 
intolerance — that is the purest moonshine. I do 
not know anything that more disgusts me with 
our Protestants than their shameful use of thi& 
detestable invention. There is excuse for you in 
England, but none for Protestants in Ireland. You 
in England might imagine the Cathohcs would try 
to pay off old scores under Home Rule, but the 
Protestants here know perfectly well that the 
Catholics are far more charitable, far more tolerant, 
far more courteous and well-behaved than them- 
selves. When they talk about Cathohc intolerance 
they say what they know to be untrue. I don't 
know how theologians would classify such state- 
ments, but in business we should call them Hes. 

" The truth is, our Protestant clergy are very 
second-rate people, they are reaUy the fools of the 



TESTIMONIES 91 

family ; not having any solid depth of character 
and precious little genuine enthusiasm for the Hfe, 
they turn themselves into theologians, make them- 
selves the violent pamphleteers of a fighting Protes- 
tantism. It sickens me, reaUy sickens me, to go to 
church on Sunday and hear a sermon preached, 
not about the Life, but about the dogmas of Rome. 
That is what our sermons are, a perpetual attack 
on Roman dogma. It gives reHgion the narrow 
and un-Christhke spirit of party poHtics. How 
people stay for Communion after hstening to 
these frothy, scornful, and embittered diatribes 
I cannot think ; for myself, I come out of church 
in a thoroughly disgusted spirit. 

" Some time ago a friend of mine was taken very 
ill and had to keep his bed. He was a Protestant, 
and a man of some importance. The rector of the 
parish called to see him. The first utterance of 
the reverend gentleman was an angry exclamation 
at sight of a picture on the bedroom wall. * What ! ' 
said he ; ' you have got a picture of a priest up 
here ! ' ' Not a priest,' said the invaHd, ' but a 
Christian brother.' ' Humph ! you must be very 
fond of him, he must be a very great friend, to have 
his picture in your bedroom.' ' Yes,' said the other, 
' he was a very great friend of mine, but it isn't 
for that reason I keep his picture in my room ; 
it is because he was the truest, noblest, simplest, 
and purest Christian I have ever known, and I 



92 TESTIMONIES 

like to see his face, like to think about his life, the 
last thing at night and the first thing in the morning.' 
This Christian brother, I must tell you, was the 
famous Brother Burke ; the holy and beautiful 
old man who introduced science and technical instruc- 
tion into schools long before anybody else, and 
who made the North Monastery in Cork one of the 
most famous schools in Europe. People came from 
all over the world to see his museum, his laboratory, 
and his technical rooms. And the poor worshipped 
him ; they adored him. His funeral in Cork was 
Hke a king's. Every shop was closed. A multitude 
followed the hearse. Women and children from 
the slums cried as the procession passed. 

" And yet that rector regarded it as a sin that 
the photograph of such a man — a man who lived 
the hfe of a Saint Francis, who so humbly, modestly, 
beautifully, and tenderly followed in the footsteps 
of his Master — should hang in a Protestant bedroom ! 
That will give you some idea of the dismal abyss 
of Protestantism in the south of Ireland. 

" Believe me, it is Protestants and only Protes- 
tants who make reMgion a part of politics. CathoHcs 
have no warmer welcome than for a Protestant 
who shares the national aspiration for Home Rule. 
I know myseH the Protestant manager of a big shop 
in Cork, one of the biggest shops in the town, 
who gives up his private room to a CathoHc bishop 
from the country when that gentleman visits the 



TESTIMONIES 93 

town and wants to see people on business. The 
bishop walks into the room with a smile, and says, 
* Now, my friend, out you go : no more pounds, 
shillings, and pence : I want your room for the 
souls of people ' ; and the manager laughs and goes. 
He teUs me that the bishop makes him reaHze the 
force of the Christian life more than any of his own 
clergy, who only come to see him when they want 
subscriptions. 

" Cork, by the way, is a town you ought to see. 
The principal street, and a very handsome one too, 
Patrick Street, contains hardly a single Catholic 
shop. The Protestants, who are in an absolute 
minority, long ago collared all the best sites and 
laid the foundation of their trade ; and their pros- 
perity depends absolutely upon the custom of 
Catholics. There is not a Prostestant in Cork 
who can deny that fact. The custom of Protestants 
would not pay the rents of those shops. Now is it 
not monstrous, with demonstrations of this kind 
before their eyes, not merely staring them in the face, 
but interwoven into the very commerce of their daily 
lives, is it not monstrous for Protestants to talk 
about CathoHc intolerance ? 

" No ; the cry of intolerance is a sham, and a 
very mean sham at that. 

" I will tell you something more. In family 
life the CathoUcs are superior to the Protestants. 
The purity of their women is extraordinary. I am 



94 TESTIMONIES 

convinced that Catholicism is essential to morals 
in Ireland. I should look with horror on any decay 
of CathoHc power. And I will teU you why I say 
that. We see in towns like this the return of a good 
many Irish emigrants. They come back with fine 
clothes, pretentious manners, a sort of drawling 
contempt for their own people, and with no rigid 
sense of purity. America gives them money with 
one hand, and takes away their moral code with the 
other. Of course there are exceptions. But what 
I teU you is strictly true of the average emigrant. 
And this is the proof of it. Precious few emigrants, 
however well off, remain in the country. They take 
a look round, leave a httle money behind them, and 
go back to the States. Ireland is too dull. Why is 
it too dull ? Because the women are pure, because 
the home is the centre of the national life, and 
because rehgion exercises a real authority. For a 
man with no moral code, Ireland is the dullest 
country in the world ; for a man who beheves in 
Grod, it is one of the most beautiful. 

" This is a strange thing, which has often puzzled 
me : in works of philanthropy, in organized charity, 
the CathoHcs are far behind us, so far indeed that 
one might almost say they are indifferent to the 
matter. On the other hand, the Protestants think 
of hardly anything else. It is not only the spirit 
of their rehgion, but a part of theii propaganda. 
Examine the accounts of our Protestant parishes 



TESTIMONIES 95 

and you would think they were nothing else but the 
scenes of benevolent activity, you would think that 
Protestantism was a living and victorious faith, 
that Catholicism was exhausted and dying. And yet, 
Protestantism is waning in Ireland. You never 
hear of Catholics becoming Protestants, but you do 
hear, and fairly frequently too, of Protestants 
becoming CathoUcs. I've told you that I myself 
should turn CathoHc but for the impossible dogmas 
that drive me out of the idea. In spite of aU the 
philanthropy of the Protestants and in spite of 
all the vigour and energy of their charities, I would 
become a CathoHc to-morrow if it were not for 
dogmas that repel me. And why is that ? Because 
no man can Hve in Ireland without feeling that 
CathoHcs — ^whatever they beheve intellectually — 
are nearer to the hfe of Christ, while Protestants — 
however ardent their philanthropic activity — ^have 
failed to win the spirit of their Master. Protestant 
as I am in my intellect, I should regard it as the 
very greatest disaster that could overtake this 
nation were it to become Protestant. And much as 
I should regret from an intellectual point of view 
the total conversion of Irish Protestants to the 
CathoHc rehgion, stiU I should not be able to deny 
the conviction that such a revolution would make for 
the moral grandeur and the sweeter manners of the 
nation. 

" It wiU give you an idea of Protestant intoler- 



96 TESTIMONIES 

ance when I teU you, a man in my position, that 
I dare not, dare not, from a business point of view, 
declare myself a Home Ruler. If I did so I should 
certainly lose three-fourths of my Protestant 
cHents. The CathoHcs come to me, knowing that 
I am a Protestant, and ignorant that I give my vote 
at every election for Home Rule. Now, does not 
this alone convince you that bigotry and intolerance 
are on the side of Protestants ? " 

He told me that very often he spends his holidays 
in bicycling through the west of Ireland, and that 
every experience of this kind deepens in his mind the 
sense of that beauty and purity of Irish life which 
must certainly strike the mind of every intelligent 
visitor from England. " I have been," he said, 
" in tiny hovels where the only decency in the sleep- 
ing arrangements was a pile of old biscuit tins 
between the beds of parents and children, of big 
boys and big girls ; and those people, I assure you, 
are more nice in their virtue, more exquisite in their 
chastity, than many better educated people witl^ 
every advantage that wealth confers. It is this 
kind of thing which has made so deep an impression 
on my mind. It is unavoidable, and it is, at least 
I find it so, extraordinarily persuasive. The Catho- 
Hcs have the secret of the moral Hfe." 

It was my pleasure to have a conversation on this 
subject with Mr. William O'Brien, no great lover 
just now of the Irish priesthood. 



TESTIMONIES 97 

Mr. O'Brien has something of the aspect of a 
prophet. His hair is long, his moustache and beard, 
I imagine, do not go often to the barber, and he is 
a Httle unorthodox in the matter of raiment. 

You are tempted to think, while he is talking, 
that the man is one of the most genial, tolerant, 
and good-humoured enthusiasts that ever Hved. 
fhe low voice is cordial and placating, the broad, 
heavy-featured, pale face is wrinkled into a smile 
that seems to have grown there from infancy, 
waxing sweeter and wider in its charity with the 
greying of his hair ; behind their spectacles his 
Httle twinkling eyes under their twitching long- 
haired brows overflow with the philanthropy and 
urbanity of a citizen of the world. No man could be 
nicer for a tea-party. 

But with the last full-stop of his talking, instan- 
taneously, just as if a string had been suddenly 
jerked from inside, the smile sweeps from the face, 
the features become set, the eyebrows stand rigid 
over eyes that have become hard as steel, the cor- 
dial waving hands fall to a grip on the knees, he 
regards you with a fixed stare that is inhuman, 
and with Httle impatient noises in the throat he sits 
Hke a statue, cold and motionless as stone, not so 
much hearing what you have to say, as obviously 
waiting to spring off with something fresh of his 
own. In these moments, in these brief pauses 
between the cascade of his smiHng, tolerant, and 



98 TESTIMONIES 

philanthropic eloquence, you realize that the man 
is a true fanatic — ^if he will forgive me for saying so, 
a veritable Mad MuUah of Irish poHtics. 

The reader must imagine in what follows that 
" WiUiam " is sitting politely on the edge of a 
little chair, leaning towards his visitor, speaking 
in a low and pleasant voice at great speed, with 
little hurrying gasps between the sentences, smiHng 
cherubically, now spreading his nice white hands 
in the air, Hke a conjurer, and now rubbing them 
softly and purringly together as though he were 
giving everybody in the world £500 a year and was 
explaining how he has just concluded a most ad- 
mirable contract for the refreshment tent in a mil- 
lennial Paradise to be opened by himself at three 
o'clock this very afternoon. 

He gives one no impression of a man fighting 
against most desperate odds, but rather of a man 
riding on the crest of a sunlit wave. You would never 
think that he has burned his boats, is in arms 
against a soUd phalanx of his former friends, that 
he is in danger, perhaps imminent danger, of over- 
whelming disaster. 

" I deplore disunion wherever it occurs," he 
declaims ; " disunion in social hfe, in family life, 
in religion, in poUtics. Differences must always exist, 
but where those differences make for strife they 
are terrible, they should be removed. And I beHeve 
in a peaceable settlement of every difficulty in the 



TESTIMONIES 99 

world. I want peace to sweeten existence as well 
as to heal old wounds. I am an evolutionist in 
politics ; I don't believe in keeping up old feuds 
and old hostilities ; I beheve in growing away from 
the past into something better. No one can say 
that I have not fought for the cause. I have fought 
and agitated with all my might. I have been in 
battles where we routed the enemy horse, foot, 
and artillery, in others where our forces were 
smashed into dust. In those days fighting was 
necessary. I remember very weU when King 
Edward came to Ireland as Prince of Wales. The first 
row he ever saw in his life was here in Cork. We 
organized it on purpose. We wanted to show him 
our real feelings. We paid him the compHment of 
truth. There was such a shindy at the railwaj^ 
station that some of his friends wanted him to go 
back ; it was, as I have told you, the very first row 
he had ever seen. But although he turned white 
and looked scared to death, he came bravely through 
the howling crowds at the station, and entered a 
carriage. What did he find ? A complete absence 
of crowds in the streets ; a frightful silence through- 
out the whole city ; and all the windows draped in 
black. His procession was like a funeral. An old 
woman came from a court entry and hurled a potato 
at him — ^marvellous to relate, it hit him. That was 
the only incident. For the rest it was silence, 
emptiness, death — a, city in mourning. Well, we 



100 TESTIMONIES 

converted him ! Yes, I am told that Cork converted 
him. He went back to England convinced that the 
Irish people were sincere in their cry for freedom, 
and ever after he was a loyal friend of Home Rule. 

" But days for that kind of thing have passed. Old 
methods give way to new methods. You would 
not send soldiers armed with bows and arrows to 
engage an enemy armed with rifles. My dear friends 
of former days apparently want to go on in the old 
way ; they beheve in the draped windows, the 
mourning, and the hurled potato. Now, I don't 
agree with them at all. I beUeve in drawing all 
classes together, in offering the warmest friendship 
to those moving in our direction. I think that Lord 
Dunraven has acted magnificently ; I think the 
party ought to have given him their very heartiest 
gratitude. Why stand aloof ? Why keep up the 
old estrangements ? Why insist on the very letter 
of your demand ? Why not try conciHation, a 
seeking of agreement, a give and take, an amicable 
undertaking ? I am persuaded that if the Nation- 
aUsts took up this position we should soon have 
the whole country puUing together, and both parties 
in England agreed about Home Rule. 

" The rehgious question is a manufactured one. 
It is deplorable and disgraceful. I am simply 
amazed by Edward Carson's obscurantism. He is 
a man who despises more heartily than anybody 
else in the House of Commons Tory ignorance of 



TESTIMONIES 101 

Ireland ; and yet he takes up this shameful cry, 
apparently he beHeves m it, and he stands out 
against a rational government. I cannot under- 
stand it. Amazing, amazing ! Edward Carson is 
a very intelligent man, He is not a genuine bigot. 
I beheve he is absolutely honest, and I know very 
Well that he has a most thorough contempt for the 
EngHsh Tory's ignorance of Ireland. Is it not a 
most amazing position ? 

" But, you know, rehgious intolerance is the ruin 
of the North. They have splendid quaMties up there, 
they develop some very fine sides of human charac- 
ter, but they are lacking in charm, in sweetness 
and Hght, in universaHty. Their narrowness and 
rigidity is most distressing — oh, most distressing ! 
In the south of Ireland it is different. We lack 
a great many of their quaHties, to our considerable 
loss, but we are more civiHzed, we are nicer people 
to Hve with, the least of our peasants has a touch 
of the grand manner in comparison with those 
insensate bigots of the North. 

" You ask me about the priests. WeU, to begin 
with, they are very bad poUticians. Some of them 
are just awakening to that fact. We are teaching 
them the lesson here in Cork. They went against 
me, soHd ; but the people would take no ruHng 
from them. I heard of one poor woman here who 
told a priest to his face that he was very good for 
her soul, but no use at aU for her politics. Oh, 



102 TESTIMONIES 

the priests have immense power ; but only in the 
moral sphere is that power unquestioned. It has 
always been questioned, and very often openly 
withstood, in politics ; but never in morals. They 
are the very finest shepherds in the world, but some- 
times precious bad politicians — oh, very bad ! 

" You must know that the rock of the Church in 
Ireland is the chastity of the priests. The Church 
would go to pieces to-morrow if the priests were 
immoral. There is one thing the Irish people, gifted 
with great imagination as they are, cannot under- 
stand — and that is an immoral priest. In the 
whole course of my long Hfe I have only known of 
two cases of impurity among Irish priests — only 
two. And if those cases had not been summarily 
dealt with the whole country would have been in 
arms. No ; they are a very wonderful body of men. 
I do not think there is a more honest priesthood 
in Christendom. They have faiHngs. Some of 
them are rather ignorant, and rather lazy, and 
there is perhaps more drinking among some of 
them than is altogether good. But the Irish people, 
the most virtuous, can understand and forgive a 
priest who tipples. The worst could not forgive 
an immoral priest. You hear them say, ' Och, the 
poor Father, sure if he does take a drop too much 
now and again, isn't it a lonely Hfe the poor man 
lives, with no wife, and no children, and him so far 
away from learned folk ? dreary's the day for him, 



TESTIMONIES 103 

and God knows it.' The Irish peasant is more 
subtle than the English in his distinctions. He 
lays much more importance on quahties of the 
spirit than on abstinence from merely selfish 
or reaUy dangerous habits. But chastity for them 
is the very bed-rock of all spiritual quaHties. They 
cannot imagine how an immoral priest can possibly 
be sincere. 

" People who do not live in Ireland find it very 
difficult to understand the Cathohcism of the Irish 
nation. It is different from the Catholicism of 
Europe — ^more childHke, trusting, and satisfied. 
Liberal ideas have not touched the primitive faith 
of the Irish people ; so far as the peasants are con- 
cerned neither science nor Hterature has had the 
smallest influence on their reHgious Hfe. No ; 
the New Theology is unknown ; Modernism has 
not gained the smallest foothold. Christ, you 
may be quite certain, is accepted absolutely as God. 
There is no question about that. And everything 
taught by the Church is cherished and befieved 
as utterly as if the Almighty Himself had spoken it. 

" The rebeUion of the Irish nation against the 
tyranny of England in ancient days was the natural 
outburst of a kind-hearted people to whom tyranny 
of any kind is unthinkable. That such people will 
ever become tyrants is not to be imagined. It 
is part of the very childHke character of their 
faith to be tender, warm-hearted, and loving. No 



104 TESTIMONIES 

man who knows the Catholics of Ireland can beheve 
for a moment that they will exercise the power of 
their majority against the Protestants. Even if 
the priests should urge them to such wickedness — 
a thing beyond behef — they would resent the idea 
with the whole force and energy of their nature." 

I have often said to Englishmen who fear Catholic 
intolerance under Home Rule : " The Irish people 
have been known throughout history as the kindest 
in the world ; why should they become tyrants 
in the twentieth century ? " The answer has 
been : " Oh, it isn't the people ; the people have 
to do what the priests tell them." But the Irish 
priest is an Irishman, drawn almost invariably 
from the kind-hearted peasantry, and if the people 
have no seeds of tyranny in their blood neither 
have the priests. 



CHAPTER V 

A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

/^NE night I arrived, a few minutes before the 
^-^ hour of dinner, at an old-fashioned hotel in 
a rather prosperous and awakening garrison town 
of Southern Ireland. Among the letters awaiting 
me was one that had not come through the 
post, a local letter, the address written in a 
thin, stiff, careful hand, the top of the envelope 
marked with elaborate instructions for immediate 
dehvery. 

This letter came from an eminent Quaker in the 
town, who had been advised by a friend of my 
arrival. It requested me, after I had dined and 
rested, to come and spend an hour with him at his 
house — the directions for finding this house occu- 
pying the greater part of the letter. Among other 
things, I was told that a street lamp stood opposite 
the door, so that I should have no difficulty in 
reading the name of the house, which was plainly 
lettered. A nice, kind, thoughtful, and considerate 
letter, but with something in it that rather chastened 
my natural good spirits. 

105 



106 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

I traced the house, advanced up a dark path, found 
myself confronted by a sombre big door, and 
timidly pulled the iron beU-handle. In a minute 
the door was opened by my host himself. 

In the feeble gaslight of the haU he looked Hke 
a spectre, and even in the warm lamp-Hghted parlour, 
into which he conducted me with a somewhat 
jerky and nervous hastiness, there seemed to me 
an aspect of inhumanity about this good and worthy 
man. TaU, thin, emaciated, of a cadaverous com- 
plexion, and with something vulture-Hke in the 
crouch of his neck, something inexorable and merci- 
less in the curved rigidity of his spine, he made me 
feel at once that I must not sit at ease in my chair, 
that I certainly should not be asked to smoke, and 
that our conversation was like to be as stiff, dan- 
gerous, and mechanical as a cross-examination. 
He wore steel-rimmed spectacles ; his greying 
brown beard descended to the third waistcoat 
button ; his clothes were a worn black ; on his 
feet were carpet-sHppers. 

There was another person in the room, my host's 
sister. He sat upon one side of the fireplace, I on 
the other, and behind us, seated at the table and 
close to the lamp, with a big basket of needlework 
before her, sat the sister, spectacled, silent, busy, 
I could hear, in the pauses of our conversation, 
the tiny griding of her needle against the thimble, 
the drawing of the thread through linen, and the 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 107 

crumpling of the material as she humped it into a 
fresh position. 

The room was strictly Victorian. The soHd 
chairs, the big table covered by a dull red cloth, 
the woollen antimacassars, the thick curtains 
drawn across the closed windows, the heavy mantel- 
piece, the big-framed story pictures, and the drilled 
rows of heavy volumes in the glass-panelled book- 
case — these things, and the closeness of the atmo- 
sphere, the exceeding primness of the arrangements, 
the awful quiet and peace of the room, filled me 
with a sense of my own irreverence. I never knew 
a clock to tick so slowly, so sleepily, so eternally, 
as the square dark marble clock in the middle of 
the mantelpiece. 

I longed for the door to burst open, for a child 
to come running in, for a dog to bark at me, even 
for a cat to curl itself up on the black hearthrug 
in front of the fire. But the fire burned steadily on, 
the curtains remained unruffled by a breath of air, 
my rigid host regarded me with the air of a vulture, 
and from over my shoulder came, with the warm 
lamphght, the scratching of needle and thimble. 

It is not my purpose to give the reader a full 
account of our conversation ; I have merely dwelt 
upon the aspect of my host and the character of 
this Irish interior to suggest to his mind the spirit 
of Irish Quakerdom. I am sure the reader, had he 
been in my place, would have felt that here was a 



108 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

man, and here was an atmosphere, hkely to be ^t 
discord with the national aspirations of Irish 
Catholics. 

But on the contrary. Although sentiment, 
apparently, plays no part in the machinery of this 
gentleman's mind, he is altogether on the side of 
Home Rule ; and far from having anything to say 
against the CathoHcs of Ireland, he confesses with 
a grim humour, chuckhng metallically, that he 
could wish his feUow-Protestants were a trifle more 
Cathohc in their virtues. 

He told me that Home Rule is a matter of busi- 
ness. As a man of business he criticizes and con- 
demns the present system. There can be no sub- 
stantial advance in Irish industry, he avers, while 
the capitaHsts of the country are subject to the 
uncertainty of Downing Street. A man is not going 
to invest money in Ireland while its government 
is tethered to a clerk's desk in London. There must 
be something settled and secure in the government 
of a country before men will embark in great 
enterprises. It will probably take fifteen years 
after Ireland has secured Home Rule before capital 
feels itself secure. But then the country will go 
ahead at a great rate. There is no doubt of 
that. The natural advantages are enormous. The 
character of the people is a guarantee of pros- 
perity. 

Before I knew where I was, he suddenly carried 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 109 

the battle into my own camp. With a maHcious 
smile in his eyes, sardonic laughter under his beard, 
he demanded to know on what possible grounds 
England could refuse self-government to Ireland. 
He spoke of South Africa, and insisted that I should 
give a reasonable reply to his challenge. He quoted 
statistics to prove that Ireland was the most 
crimeless nation in Europe. On what ground, then, 
on what possible ground, could England refuse 
Home Rule to Ireland? Did England think the 
Irish were savages ? Did she imagine they were not 
able to look after their own affairs — ^Uke a parcel of 
children ? Did she truly beheve that Ireland would 
cut herself out of the empire and one day appear 
at London Bridge in German cruisers ? 

My answer to this onslaught — ^it is a very terrible 
experience for a man in a Quaker's parlour to find 
himself suddenly called upon to defend the honour 
and intelhgence of Mother England — drew from my 
host a very remarkable statement, a statement the 
truth and hkehhood of which I have since confirmed 
aU over Ireland. 

I said to him : " You must remember that the 
EngHshmen who have to decide this question are 
very ordinary people, poor men, for the most part, 
struggling to make two ends meet, exceedingly 
anxious for more pressing reforms at home, and 
entirely ignorant of Ireland. It would have been 
different, I think, if Irish members of ParHament 



110 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

had produced a different impression on those 
EngHsh people. The average EngHshman in the 
matter of politics acts almost wholly by instinct. 
And his instinct concerning Ireland, got from the 
hurly-burly of Irish politicians at Westminster, has 
so far been against Home Rule." 

The Quaker repHed : " But does the average 
EngHshman imagine that under Home Rule an 
Irish Parhament wiU be composed of the men now 
at Westminster ? " 

" I think he does. Is it not the case ? " 
The Quaker laughed. " There are some very 
able men," he replied, " among the Irish members, 
some very clever, shrewd, capable fellows ; but the 
bulk is not representative of Ireland. Those men 
are our servants. We hire them, we employ them, 
and we send them to Westminster with one definite 
object, an object for which they are excellently 
fitted. We send them there to hold up your Parlia- 
mentary machine. We send them to do the rough- 
and-tumble work of making England sick of the 
Irish question. And when Home Rule is a fact, 
their work will be done, their job will be over ; they 
will subside to their natural place in the body 
poHtic. No ; the Irish Parhament will be composed 
almost solely of business and professional men. 
Throughout the country there are men of weight 
and position who wiU enter poHtics, men who will 
not be ashamed to become politicians when Irish 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 111 

poKtics is a science of government. You cannot 
expect such men to waste their time over work at 
Westminster which a second-rate person can do 
better than they could do it themselves. You must 
remember that the men of whom I am speaking 
are men of very real parts ; Ireland is a civiHzed 
country ; our merchants and our traders are 
rational creatures. We shall have a ParHament 
quite capable of looking after our affairs. You need 
have no misgiving on that head. Ireland will be 
governed in such a way as to encourage the invest- 
ment of capital and to increase our commercial 
prosperity. The demand for Home Rule is chiefly 
for this purpose. The present arrangement is bad 
business, it is ruinous. As a business community we 
want something better." 

He spoke with warm admiration of certain Irish 
members of ParHament, but he was emphatic in his 
affirmation that the ruck would have no place in 
the poHtics of a self-governing Ireland. He said 
that there were plenty of men connected with rail- 
ways, with mills, with factories, with land, and with 
the learned professions who would only be too glad 
to enter an Irish ParHament and devote their powers 
to Irish prosperity. 

As I have said, I found that other men in Ireland 
confirmed this statement. From one end of the 
country to the other I came across business men 
who told me with an equal emphasis of conviction 



112 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

that an Irish ParHament would be composed of the 
most capable and responsible citizens. 

I asked the Quaker if he had no misgiving on the 
head of CathoHc intolerance. 

" There is no such thing," he answered, " except 
in the imagination of Orangemen." 

" You think that Catholics will be fair and just ? " 

"They are fair and just now, why should they 
be anything else under Home Rule ? They could 
boycott us now, they could make it impossible for 
us to live, without breaking the law in any way 
they could drive every one of us out of the south 
of Ireland. Our bread-and-butter, do you not see, 
depends upon them. We are only a handful, they 
are a multitude. But they trade with us, they show 
us consideration, and they manifest no resentment 
against our prosperity. I find them in business 
singularly straightforward and honest. I wish I 
could say the same thing of all the Protestants, 
Now, why should people who for centuries have lived 
with us on the most amicable terms, who might 
have ostracized us, who might have boycotted 
and ruined us without incurring the smallest danger, 
and who, by our ruin, might have gained our pros- 
perity — why should they suddenly, just because 
Ireland manages her own affairs, put us to the 
sword ? The idea is preposterous ! In spite of the 
contempt shown to them by certain Protestants, 
they have always manifested to us a feeling of 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 113 

respect and friendliness. I have a great admiration 
for the virtue and honesty of Irish Catholics." 

I am sure the average EngHshman who has given 
Httle thought to Ireland wiU be impressed by the 
fact that there are Quakers hving in that country 
who are in favour of Home Rule. I hope that what 
is written above may have weight with Enghsh 
Protestants. And to emphasize this striking fact 
of Quaker confidence in Irish CathoHcs, I will 
take leave to quote in conclusion of this chapter 
a letter written by a prominent and substantial 
Tipperary Quaker to the Spectator on the subject of 
Cathohc intolerance. No just man, after reading 
this letter, can surely beHeve the wicked and shame- 
ful insinuations with which certain unscrupulous 
Protestants living peaceably in CathoHc Ireland 
have sought to traduce, for the gross sake of social 
ascendancy, their fellow-Christians. 

This is the letter, written by Mr. Ernest Grubb, 
of Carrick-on-Suir : — 

"Sir, — My attention has been directed to a 
letter from Miss Anne W. Richardson, of Moyallah, 
Co. Down, in your issue of March 18th last, 
which contained statements as to the state of 
feehng existing between Roman CathoHcs and 
Protestants in the south of Ireland. 

"Miss Richardson may be an authority as to 



114 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

the state of affairs in the north-east of Ireland, 
but she has not Uved in the south of Ireland, 
and she has not had the experience of social Hfe 
there that I have had. 

" I must be somewhat egotistical in order to 
estabhsh my claim to be a competent witness, 
one who can give reliable evidence on this ques- 
tion. I am a member of the Society of Friends, 
and have spent my life as a trader at Carrick- 
on-Suir, Clonmel, etc., in the south-east of Ire- 
land. I have taken an active part in the public 
life of my neighbourhood. I am a Justice of the 
Peace for the counties of Tipperary and Water- 
ford, and have been for many years an elected 
member (and Chairman) of the County Council 
of Tipperary South and the Urban Council of 
Carrick-on-Suir and other public bodies. Ninety 
to ninety-eight per cent, of my constituents are 
Roman Catholics, and if ' religious intolerance ' 
existed I would not have been chosen for these 
positions. As regards the willingness of Roman 
CathoHcs to elect Protestants to pubhc boards, 
I may add that a Protestant Unionist and a 
Quaker lady were (the latter for many years) 
elected guardians of the poor at Carrick-on-Suir. 
A Quaker Unionist has for many years been vice- 
chairman of the Board of Guardians at Clonmel, 
and I could give instances of Roman CathoHcs, 
including priests, writing to place Protestants in 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 115 

posts of profit and responsibility when they were 
suitable for such appointments. 

" With reference to Miss Richardson's state- 
ment about Waterford, the Salvation Army ladies 
there told me yesterday that they hold their 
open-air meetings without molestation, sometimes 
wearing uniform. One or two poHce are at 
times present as spectators, and this good order 
has prevailed for a long time. 

" The case of the Salvation Army officer who 
was injured on Waterford Quay about the year 
1900 is an isolated occurrence, and if I remember 
rightly, tactfulness might have prevented friction. 
Within my own knowledge, two or more preachers, 
some in clerical costume, pray and preach at 
fairs in this district. They are Hstened to quietly, 
and are not molested ; although they stand in the 
way of traffic, the country people drive their 
carts round them. It would be impossible to 
picture a better and more Christian reception. 
The fair folk are one hundred to one Roman 
Cathohcs. 

" Three or four Protestants have, within the 
last few years, taken farms in this district pre- 
viously occupied by Roman Cathohcs, and their 
relations with their Roman Cathohc neighbours 
have been altogether harmonious. 

" My father and mother and their family lived 
here through the disturbances in 1848 in WiUiam 



116 A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 

Smith O'Brien's time, and afterwards through the 
period of the Fenian troubles, but we never had 
any difficulty with our neighbours or any insult 
offered to us. 

"I have, personally, no fear that whatever 
legislative changes may take place in the arrange- 
ments for the government of Ireland there wiU 
be anything to prevent Roman CathoHcs and 
Protestants from Hving harmoniously together 
in the land of their birth. — I am, sir, etc., 

"J. Ernest Grubb. 

** Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland." 

The Cork Constitution^ the principal Unionist 
journal in those parts of Ireland, quoting Mr. 
Grubb's view that whatever legislative changes 
might take place, there would be nothing to prevent 
Protestants and Roman CathoHcs from Hving har- 
moniously together, adds (May 2nd, 1911) : — 

" Few wiU be found ready to take serious 
exception to this statement, for it is not so much 
religious as pohtical intolerance that is feared 
by the minority in Ireland." 

Of this remarkable admission, Mr. Stephen 
Gwynn has justly said : " What the Cork Con- 
stitution means by pohtical intolerance is, that 
Irish County Councils will elect as public officers 
persons in sympathy with their own pohtical 



A QUAKER'S PARLOUR 117 

views. If this be persecution, then political per- 
secution is universally practised in Great Britain." 
I believe there have always been more Protes- 
tants Home Rulers in the Irish Parliamentary party 
than Roman Catholics in the rest of the House of 
Commons. " For more than a hundred years the 
majority of leaders of the Irish people in the struggle 
for national freedom have been Protestants.'''' Surely 
that should be enough to settle the question for 
Protestants in England. The majority of leaders 
have been Protestants. 



CHAPTER VI 
FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

I DROVE one day in the south of Ireland a 
matter of twenty Irish miles to dine and sleep 
with a member of Parliament. My baggage was 
corded to the front of the car, and the jarvey on 
the right side and I on the left, behind a chestnut 
mare that tugged at the bit without a stop the 
whole length of the journey, scarcely exchanged 
a word. But for the exciting pace of the horse and 
the stimulating beauty of the country, this would 
have been the very dullest of my journeys. 

" She is a fine mare," I said admiringly. " She 
is that, sorr," said the jarvey. After a considerable 
pause : " She doesn't seem to mind the hills." 
" She does not, sorr." Another pause. " This is 
beautiful country." " Och, it's well enough, 
sorr." Another and a longer pause. Then, very 
encouragingly : "Do you have excitement down 
here at election times ? " " None at aU, sorr." 

A thoughtful hostess had given me a packet of 
gingerbreads for this cold drive, and I offered my 
jarvey the freedom of the bag. He helped himself 

118 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 119 

with a momentary smile, and then became as 
grim as a mute, munching in a silence which could 
only have been broken with considerable danger. 
So we rattled along without speech, up hill and 
down dale, bumping and swinging through the cold 
air, till the twihght of a winter's afternoon settled 
upon the quiet earth. 

My host, a soHcitor, inhabits a handsome red- 
bricked house in a Georgian-looking terrace which 
would, I think, have pleased the eye of Thackeray. 
This terrace, with tall raiHngs and steep steps to the 
doors, is only separated from a double-barreUed 
river by the road, a plot of grass, and a Hne of 
stately poplars. The island which divides the 
broad river is almost opposite the door. Standing 
before this tall and reeded door one hears the rush 
of water at a weir on the opposite side of the 
island, and nearer, the rustle of the dark poplars 
at the river's edge. On the further side of the 
river, dimly seen through the trees, are gentle hills 
planted with homesteads. A prettier prospect for 
the office windows of a solicitor I have never seen. 

The door was opened by an elderly gentlewoman, 
who announced herself to be my host's house- 
keeper, and who conducted me, with a somewhat 
elaborate but most picturesque ritual of hospitality, 
to the floor above. In a large and lofty apartment, 
I found one end of a long table laid for dinner, 
while the other end was piled with books, which 



120 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

were not solely legal or Parliamentary. A huge 
coal-fire blazed in the grate. The windows were 
shuttered, the curtains drawn. Comfortable chairs 
stood on either side of the hearth. Cigarettes and 
matches were set ready on the mantelpiece. 

My host, I was told, would soon be back, was 
indeed aheady overdue. He had gone to a meeting 
some few miles away, but he was driving a couple 
of horses and it could not now be long before he 
returned. The housekeeper expressed as much 
anxiety for my comfort and entertainment as 
soHcitude for the dinner she was preparing in the 
kitchen. 

I sat by the fire convinced that Ireland was the 
most silent country in the world. Then I fetched 
a book of Irish poems from the table, and read 
it nearly through. Occasionally the housekeeper 
mounted the stairs to express her growing anxiety 
and offer fresh apologies for the inconvenience I 
was suffering ; then she would disappear, mutter- 
ing, to look after her imperilled cooking. An hour 
of silence passed away. . . . 

Presently the sound of trotting hoofs and rumbling 
wheels was heard in the night outside, and — ^yes, 
they stopped below the windows. I heard voices ; 
the horses trotted away ; a key was turned in the 
lock of the front door ; the door closed with a hand- 
some thud ; voices ascended to me, and steps began 
to mount the stairs. 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 121 

My host entered, quick, alert, pleasant, apolo- 
getic — a smaU, precise, trim-bearded, eye-glassed 
man, fuU of capacity and restrained force. He was 
followed by a slow-moving, heavy-shouldered, and 
solemn giant — a brother Member of ParHament. 

Then came the explanation. There had been 
trouble at the meeting. When they arrived at the 
place, they found the people in a ferment and a 
body of police in occupation. The meeting had 
been proscribed ! It was a gathering called to pro- 
test against the handling of certain grazing ground, 
and somebody in the neighbourhood had evidently 
telegraphed to DubHn Castle expressing alarm. That 
was enough. The result was a legion of warlike 
constables under the generalship of a County In- 
spector. 

" And consider, sir, the fatuity as weU as the 
scandalous insult of the proceeding," said the 
giant, appealing to my judgment. " The order 
forbade us to hold the meeting at a certain spot, 
but did not say that we were not to hold it at 
another. Could anything on God's earth be more 
foohsh than that ? * Do I understand, Mr. Inspec- 
tor,' I asked — ^I know the man well, and he's a 
very good feUow — * that your order forbids me 
to address these people, my constituents, Mr. In- 
spector, forbids me to address my constituents at 
this one spot, and not at that spot over there, ten 
yards away ? ' He admitted such was the case. 



122 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

But I was not to be fobbed oflP. Standing there, and 
addressing myself to the Inspector, I said all I 
wanted to say, and I said it with the greater force 
inspired by this disgraceful provocation. In fact, 
I made a speech ! The people crowded about us, 
and they were wiUing enough to resent the insult 
offered to me and to my honourable friend here ; 
but we held them in check. I told the Inspector 
that but for us, but for our restraining influence 
on the side of law and order, his presence there, and 
the presence of his constables, might have led to 
bloodshed. ' Take note,' I said, * that we have 
ordered the people to keep the peace, and helped 
you to do your duty.' Then we walked across the 
road and held our meeting ! " 

There was no hysterical excitement about these 
two heroes of a proscribed meeting. The giant was 
scornful, satirical, indignant. The lawyer was 
amused, and laughed as he gave his version of the 
adventure. We sat down to roast chickens in the 
best of good-humours. Silence was dissipated. 
Ireland had found her tongue. 

I said that it would be an amusing day for Ire- 
land when Lord Londonderry and Sir Edward 
Carson were run in for ferocious and inciting lan- 
guage — a brace of Pistols more dangerous, I was 
sure, than my present friends. The giant raised 
his huge hands, opened his eyes wide, and shook 
his head with reproach. " Leave them alone, sir, 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 123 

leave them alone. You know what the Irish con- 
stable said to the excitable gentleman at a meeting. 
' Look here,' says he, * if you don't behave your- 
self,' he says, * I won't run you in ! ' Oh no, leave 
them alone. But, I understand. You're joking ; 
of course, of course." 

I discovered that this giant, a most respected 
man, and a former mayor of the town, had been a 
Fenian. Conversation worked round to the old 
days of Irish agitation, and the giant held the field 
with stately eloquence. His iron-grey hair made 
an excellent foil to the purple of his skin ; the 
large eyes, now kindly with age, had once been 
fierce and challenging ; he wore a moustache, and 
looked like some old heavy-shouldered Prussian 
general who had soldiered with Moltke. 

It was interesting to notice how the subject of 
old days worked up the Fenian slumbering in his 
soul; amusing to observe how in the midst of a 
peroration which never quite perorated to a close, 
the precise httle man of law vainly, but with perfect 
good-temper over the failure, endeavoured to begin 
a more modern speech of his own. 

" I have seen men whipped at the cart's tail," 
said the old Fenian. " I have seen the blood 
streaming from their backs, and I have seen them 
hanged Hke dogs in the street ; and I say those 
men were murdered, I say they were martyrs, I say 
their blood was given for God and country; and 



124 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

although, glory be to God, the times have changed, 
and England is now ready to listen to Ireland's cry, 
and the justification for violence can no longer 
be pleaded, I say that the Fenians did a righteous 
work, and that Ireland will owe her eventual free- 
dom, her Hberty, and her life to the blood they shed 
for their country." 

" There is a point I should like to " began 

our host. 

" But I say to England," broke in the old Fenian, 
" that if she denies us now the gift of self-govern- 
ment, if she draws back and plays the coward and 
the traitor, Ireland will no longer be at peace, the 
old spirit will manifest itself, and violence will 
confront her at every turn in her way." 

" I think, perhaps, we ought to point out " 

" Let there be no mistake about it," cried the 
Fenian, with a bang of his great fist on the table, 
"Ireland is peaceful now because she anticipates 
justice, because she recognizes, gratefully and 
generously recognizes, that England is endeavouring 
to make reparation for the past, and God grant 
that reparation may be made soon, aye, and in full. 
But let England deceive Ireland once again- " 

" Oh, but she won't," said the smiHng lawyer, 
fixing his polished eye-glasses on the bridge of his 
nose. "We needn't fear that. I was going to 
point out " 

" I say, let England deceive Ireland once again," 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 125 

roared the big Fenian, "let Ireland once again be 
thrown back upon the bitter memories of her tragic 
history, and you wiU have a more angry and a 
more violent spirit at work than anything you 
have known in the past. But I confidently beUeve, 
and I thank God for it, that the day of estrangement 
is over, the long night of misunderstanding is at 
an end ; we shall live together, sir, in peace and 
honourable friendship ; and Ireland wiU be a source 
of strength to England, more loyal than Canada, 
more powerful for help than any other integral part 
of the British Empire ; and I beheve that England 
will live to love Ireland and to thank her for showing 
her the path of duty." 

" I don't think people quite realize " began 

the lawyer. 

"That is my belief, sir," continued the Fenian, 
now thoroughly urbane, flourishing a napkin and 
bowing in my direction ; " and I thank God, sir, 
I say I thank God, that I am likely to live to see 
the day when our two nations, burying the past 
and forgetting old offences, wiU stand together in 
the inseparable bonds of friendship and respect, 
firm for righteousness, strong for progress, and un, 
conquerable against the fury of their enemies." 

" Quite so, and " 

" But, as I said before, let England disappoint 
Ireland once again " etc. etc. 

It was a most excellent dinner, and I thoroughly 



126 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

enjoyed the unending peroration of the handsome 
old Fenian, knowing that I should have opportunity 
later on of hearing the more modern wisdom of my 
host. 

" Ah, if I could tell you all I have seen and known 
in this very neighbourhood," cried the Fenian. 
" I remember old men being flogged and hanged, 
I remember the most respectable men in this town 
being thrown into prison for a speech to their fellow- 
countrymen on the glory of Uberty and patriotism. 
Those things made a very great impression on my 
mind, but they did not assume a poUtical signifi- 
cance ; they simply made me hate the police and 
loathe the law of the land. But one day, when I 
was still a boy, I went with my father for a drive, 
and I saw a sight that made me from that moment 
a poUtician. It was a wet day, and as we drove up 
to the house of a land-agent, we saw the tenants, 
who had called to pay their rents, taking off their 
boots outside the house before they entered. I 
asked my father why they did so. He laughed 
bitterly and said that it was always done — ^it was 
a part of a tenant's duty to his landlord. At that 
moment there came to me not only a feehng of 
patriotism, but a feeUng of manhood." He flung 
back his head, squared his great shoulders, opened 
wide his eyes, and, half smiHng and half threatening, 
exclaimed, " I felt myself to be no serf ! I would 
have felled that man to the earth — whoever he was 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 127 

— ^who ordered me to take my boots off at his door ! 
And from that day I dreamed of giving my life for 
Ireland, dreamed of rescuing my land from the 
humiHation and debasement of a foreign tjnranny ; 
there was nothing I would not then have done to 
win my country's freedom. And there's not an 
EngHshman worth the name who in Hke conditions 
would not have the same passions smouldering in 
his breast. I assure you that spirit of NationaHty 
was like an agony gnawing at our hearts. I met 
an old poor man the other day, a little farmer not 
many miles from here, who recognized me, greeted 
me by name, and shook my hand ; then he said to 
me in a whisper, smiHng with a hundred memories 
in his eyes, Fve still got her. That was enough. 
It was Hke a Freemason's sign between us. He 
meant that he stiU kept his old Fenian's musket ! 

" I can teU you a story which shows how men 
became Fenians in those days, and how Fenianism 
— ^let EngUshmen despise and condemn it as they 
will — ^won Ireland the first steps on her road to 
freedom. There were two farmers in this country, 
one an old soldier with a wooden leg who let his 
land go as it would, the other a most industrious, 
hard-working man who did his duty by the land 
and grubbed every halfpenny out of its soil. The 
timber-legged gentleman was generously and in- 
dulgently treated by the landlord's agent ; the 
other was rack-rented and persecuted by the police 



128 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

till his life was almost unendurable. Directly he 
improved his land, the rent was raised, directly he 
repaired his buildings or bought himself a decent 
coat, the rent was raised ; and the other man 
Hved on at the same rent, unmolested by the police 
and treated with respect by his landlord. 

" One day these two men met at a wedding. A 
priest who knew them well, both the meek and 
patient man and timber-toes, asked the latter, 
* How is it the poHce don't persecute you, as they 
persecute your neighbour here ? ' The old soldier 
laughed between his teeth, proudly, defiantly. 
' Because, Father,' said he, ' they know I'd shoot ! ' 

" Do you wonder, then, that men with the real 
stuff of manhood in them, regarded meekness, and 
patience, and docihty, and subserviency as virtues 
too fine for this rough world ? Do you wonder that 
these men armed themselves, and sought by any 
means in their power, lawful or unlawful, to defend 
their manhood and their, honour ? But, thanks be 
to God, that is all over and done with. The old 
rancour is past. The old bitterness and hatred are 
forgotten. Once, I do assure you " — his eyes blazed 
and he clenched his fists — " we would have plunged 
England to the bottom of the sea, aye, and, if we 
could, we would have ripped up the bottom and 
sunk her to another place below, down, down, down, 
as far as we could get her ! But now, thanks be to 
God " — ^his face softened, his eyes smiled, and his 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 129 

voice cooed — " we have no other feehng in our 
hearts than a desire to forget the past and to live 
in friendship and goodwill with our friends across 
St. George's Channel." 

When this interesting old man had departed, 
taking his leave with a reaUy charming courtesy 
which reminded me of Sir WiUiam Harcourt, my 
host the lawyer drew his chair a Httle nearer to the 
fire, handed me the cigarettes, and began to speak 
of Ireland's future. The contrast was complete. 
Ireland's past is full of sound and fury, of poetry 
and heroism, of fighting and speech-making ; her 
future is concerned with butter and eggs, a sensible 
adjustment of trading relations with England, and 
a development of industries. 

The lawyer never once raised his voice, never 
once began an interminable peroration, never 
threatened or forgave. In the even tones and the 
direct language of a modern business man he dis- 
cussed the future of Ireland with a sagacity that 
seemed to me of good augury for the Irish Parha- 
ment. 

He said that all idea of separation from England 
is now regarded as absurd. No sensible man in 
Ireland dreams of such a thing. If Ireland is 
necessary to England, so much more is England 
necessary to Ireland. In a word, England is Ire- 
land's market. No sensible business man will 
imperil his best market. "To quarrel with you," 



130 FENIAN, LAWYEE, AND EARL 

he said, " would be to quarrel with our bread and 
butter. We are not likely to do that. For selfish 
reasons alone, we shall try to inspire English confi- 
dence in Irish undertakings and English affection 
for the Irish people. We have our Uving to get." 

The future of Ireland, he declared, lies in agricul- 
tural development. The possibiHties in this direction 
are very great. With modern methods and im- 
proved machinery appHed by so clever and in- 
dustrious a nation, there is here immense room for 
evolution. Ireland must always be first and fore- 
most an agricultural nation. It is quite possible, 
he thinks, for Ireland to become the market-garden 
of England. Another field in which the possibiHties 
are considerable is the milk trade. At present it 
is hardly organized at aU, and the methods are old- 
fashioned. 

He spoke about the absurdity of sending milk 
in broad-bottomed cans which taper to the top like 
a sugar-loaf. Not only, he pointed out, is it difficult 
to clean those cans properly, but they waste enor- 
mous space in transit, and so add to the cost of 
carriage. This very obvious criticism had not 
occurred to me before. I had accepted the com- 
mercial milk-can with gravitation, decimals, and 
income-tax. But my host was a revolutionist. 
In future, he said, Ireland wiU send her milk to 
England in flat, trunk-like cans which may be piled 
in train or steamer one on top of the other, wasting 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 131 

no space whatever, and which can be thoroughly 
and easily cleaned. Stirring times ! The Higher 
Criticism has no reverence even for immemorial 
milk-cans. 

But my host is not a light-hearted Anarchist. 
He declared emphatically that Sociahsm is a 
quite impossible creed for Ireland. Of all European 
countries, Ireland is the most Conservative. He 
said that the grouping of parties in the Irish Parha- 
ment would testify to this Conservative instinct of 
the Irish nation. Mr. Redmond, he thinks, wiU be 
at the head of an overwhelming Conservative party. 
Mr. Joseph DevHn, mth Belfast at his back, will 
lead a very intelUgent and active Democratic party. 
Mr. Devlin will work for the revival of Irish in- 
dustries, and for various social reforms on the 
model of Liberal legislation in England ; Mr. 
Redmond will grudgingly and only under the 
greatest pressure yield to the mildest of these 
demands. "We shall develop village industries," 
he said ; " but our social reforms will attempt 
nothing heroic. We are farmers and gardeners. 
And what is more, we don't want to be anything 
else." 

For himself, he is devoted to the land question, 
of which he has made a particular study, and his 
conviction is that the tendency of Irish legislation 
for many years to come will be all in this direction. 
" Our battles," he said, " will be pastoral ! " 



132 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

I went from this pleasant terraced house over- 
looking a beautiful river flowing through a market- 
town full of activity and business, to the Httle 
exquisite Eden of Adare, where Lord Dunraven 
spends the greater part of his time in Ireland. The 
domain is so beautiful, with its river and lakes, 
its woodlands and its lawns, its ruins and its gar- 
dens, that one forgets the depression and ughness 
of the surrounding country and forgives the rather 
pretentious and forbidding character of the man- 
sion's architecture. It is a place for a poet, even 
more lovely than Penshurst, and to linger in those 
grounds is to forget the fierce struggle for existence, 
the defilements of competitive industrialism. 

For Lord Dunraven himself one can only have 
admiration and real liking. He has done the 
bravest thing an Irish landlord can do — ^he has made 
friends with Nationalist members of Parliament, 
Moreover, he has spoken and written with con- 
vincing logic, and a whoUy unquestionable honesty, 
on the subject of Devolution, and has publicly on 
many occasions associated himself with the national 
aspirations of Irishmen. This, and his lavish 
generosity as landlord and farmer, has secured for 
him a place in Irish Hfe which is as honourable 
and patriotic as it is admirable in the eyes of many 
Nationalists, and detestable in the eyes of every 
Orangeman. 

He grows old invisibly, and his laughter and 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 133 

cheerfulness are as middle-aged as the quiet 
vigour with which he expresses his opinions. It is 
difficult to reaHze that he was born when Queen 
Victoria was yet a girl, and has lived a life full of 
excitement and adventure. 

I do not think that he is quite abreast of modern 
thought, that he is fully conscious of democratic 
ideahsm, or that he has so completely lost, as 
Sir Edward Grey, for instance, the rather hindering 
affection for the idea of social caste. But he is intel- 
lectual, he is practical, and he has the wisdom of 
common sense. If he does not march in the front 
rank of humanity, he at any rate marches in step with 
the general army. He adapts himself, or at any 
rate endeavours to adapt himself, to the changing 
world, with cheerfulness and good-humour. Mr. 
Lloyd George has hit him hard financially ; Lord 
Dunraven does not minimize this effect of Liberal 
finance on his exchequer ; but he agrees that such 
taxation is necessary, and accepts the burden with- 
out complaint. 

I asked him how it was that he came to take an 
interest in the Irish question, how he found time 
in the midst of a sporting and fashionable Hfe, with 
aU the capitals of Europe for his playground, to 
study the somewhat dreary business of Irish 
pohtics. I asked this question because one meets 
in Ireland many men less wealthy and less involved 
in the bewitchments of society than Lord Dunraven 



134 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

who profess the most lofty contempt for Irish 
poHtics and only yawn at the mention of Irish 
Nationality. 

My host smiled at the question. " I'm afraid," 
said he, " that I thought precious Httle about the 
matter in my youth. I was as bad as any other 
young fellow of my age in that respect. I was far 
keener on sport, on social Hfe ; and my Uterary 
and scientific interests carried me still further afield 
from Ireland. But I think I must have inherited 
from my father a tendency that sooner or later 
was bound to draw my attention to Ireland. He 
was an archaeologist, and as an archaeologist loved 
Ireland. He did not interest himself in Irish poUtics, 
but he was consumedly interested in the Irish people 
and in Irish customs and beUefs. My own first step 
towards sympathy with Ireland came in middle-hfe, 
and began with my perception that the root trouble 
of Irish discontent lay in the Land question. As 
an Irish landlord I was affected by Land Agitation, 
and this led me to study the matter. I began my 
study merely as an Irish landlord, and with no pre- 
possessions in favour of Irish pohticians — ^in fact, 
I suppose I rather despised those gentry. But my 
investigations brought me into contact with the 
Nationalists, and I very soon discovered that many 
of them were able, honourable, and very pleasant 
fellows. That was my first illumination ! As I 
proceeded in my work I lost all antipathies in this 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 136 

respect, and came to see that a settlement of the 
Land question and a measure of Devolution were 
not only essential for Irish prosperity, but would 
transform Ireland into a powerful and loyal member 
of the British Empire. You can imagine that such 
a perception made me enthusiastic, both as an 
Irishman and as an ImperiaHst. But the work was 
extremely difficult and disheartening. The Con- 
servatives flirted with the idea from time to time, 
but lacked courage and conviction to make it the 
centre of their Irish poHcy. And with the exception 
of a few very noble men, the Nationahsts hung back, 
clung to their isolation, persisted in their aloofness, 
and would not concentrate with the rest of us on 
the work of ConciHation. However, the idea has 
penetrated every poHtical party, both in England 
and Ireland, and I think that some day men will 
acknowledge the justice and wisdom of our propa- 
ganda. I am not a Separatist, not a Home Ruler 
in the professional sense of that term, but I am an 
Imperialist and a Devolutionist. Whatever may 
be the fate of our theory, I am glad of the little 
humble part I have played in Irish poHtics, if only 
because it has broadened my knowledge, enlarged 
my sympathies, and made me — ^I hope I may say 
so — a better Irishman." 

Three brief extracts from Lord Dunraven's 
book, The Outlook in Ireland, will convince any open- 
minded reader of the immense seriousness of this 



136 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

Irish question. So many people are content to 
think of the Irish struggle as a game played by 
political agitators for the sake of a wage ; very few 
people realize that Ireland is now at this moment 
heading for absolute bankruptcy, an impoverished, 
a bleeding, and a dying nation. Lord Dunraven's 
conversion should persuade careless thinkers in 
England that there is at least some Reality in 
Ireland's struggle for existence, and a perusal of 
his book should make them fighters for the Irish 
Cause. 

Consider these three short statements : — 

In 1841 Ireland had over three times as 
many inhabitants as Scotland could boast ; half 
as many as England and Wales claimed. At 
that time nearly one-third of the whole popula- 
tion of the United Kingdom lived in Ireland. 
In sixty years the population of Ireland had fallen 
by nearly 4,000,000 (for in 1903 the number was 
estimated to be 4,391,565) — a record of national 
wastage which is unparalleled in the history of 
the world. 

Let readers ponder on the fact that Ireland 
has a larger proportion of aged than any other 
country in the King's dominions, because the 
young and energetic have fled to other lands in 
search of happiness and fortune. In Ireland, out 
of every thousand of the population, there are 



FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 137 

sixty-four men and sixty-three women of sixty-five 
years of age or upward ; while in England and 
Wales the figures are forty-two and fifty-one 
respectively ; and in Scotland, forty-one and 
fifty-six. 

And there is another terrible leakage from 
which Ireland is suffering, namely, lunacy. The 
figures of the Census of 1901 tell an amazing story 
of the mental gloom which year by year has 
been settling down upon those who have re- 
mained in the old country. . . . The mental 
ravages among the Irish people are set forth with 
shocking lucidity in the last Census Report : 
" The total number of lunatics and idiots re- 
turned in 1851 was equal to a ratio of 1 in 657 
of the population ; in 1861, to 1 in 411 ; in 
1871, to 1 in 328 ; in 1881, to 1 in 281 ; in 1891, 
to 1 in 222 ; and on the present occasion, to 1 
in 178." 

Drained by emigration, gloomed by the absence 
of the young, let and hindered by the sense of an 
immemorial pohtical wrong, Ireland, now brought 
to beggary by EngHsh legislation, makes another 
eager, pathetic, and passionate appeal to Great 
Britain for the one boon which can avert her 
ruin and make possible her ultimate salvation. 

Whether it be by the eloquence of the old Fenian, 
the common sense of the precise lawyer, or the 



138 FENIAN, LAWYER, AND EARL 

passionless conversion to her cause of the aristo- 
cratic landlord, let the reader be persuaded that 
Ireland, whatever he may think of the matter, con- 
siders that she has suffered grievous wrong, is now 
in a perilous and most calamitous condition, and 
by self-government may find a happy issue out of aU 
her afflictions. 



CHAPTER VII 
MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 

CORK is a city full of encouragements for lan- 
guid people. If the Fat Boy of Pickwick had 
lived there I doubt if he would have wakened even 
to take his meals. 

It is a city composed of aU the quiet corners 
and sleepy places of other cities. You find there a 
terrace of white villas on a green and leafy hiU 
that has been Hfted bodily from the Riviera, 
a neglected square transplanted from the inner 
quiet of Antwerp, a Mall that has walked in 
its sleep from Bury St. Edmunds, a riverside that 
has floated from Blois, and a suburban quarter 
that people must vainly be looking for in Wimble- 
don. 

But this slumbrous patchwork quilt of a city 
has one scarlet oasis of trumpeting Violence. It is 
a National Monument — a monument to the patriots 
of other days. Not beautiful, but aggressive, not 
elevating, but terrifjdng, this mass of tortured 
stone stands in the centre of the city's peace like 

139 



140 MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 

Boreas executing an apache dance in the fields of 
lotus-land. 

I was taken to see it one morning by a peaceful 
and law-abiding colonel, retired from the Indian 
Army — ^an elderly and amiable man, entirely loyal 
to the British Empire, solemnly gratified by Britain's 
glory, a thoughtful orthodox Presbyterian, a steady 
Home Ruler, and a Christian living in love and 
charity with his Catholic neighbours. You could 
scarcely imagine a more delectable guide for so war- 
whooping a monument. 

On one side of this fearsome erection is the follow- 
ing inscription : — 

1798 

Erected through the efforts of the Young 
Ireland Society to perpetuate the memory 
of the gaUant men of 1798, 1803, '48, and 
'67 — who fought and died in the wars of 
Ireland to recover her sovereign independ- 
ence and to inspire the youth of our coun- 
try to follow in their patriotic footsteps 
and imitate their heroic example, " and right- 
eous men will make our land a nation 



Unveiled St. Patrick's Day, 1906, by the Revd. 

P. F. Kavanagh, o.f.m.. President, Cork Young 

Ireland Society. 



MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 141 

On the other side are the following words : — 

We must not fail, we must not fail, 

However force or fraud assail ; 

By honour, pride, and policy. 

By heaven itself, we must be free ; 

Be sure the great God never planned 

For slumbering slaves, a home so grand. — Davis. 

If I could grasp the fires of hell in my hands, I would hurl 
them in the face of my country's enemies. 

John Mitchell. 

I looked from these tremendous words to the 
gentle colonel at my side, who, holding eye-glasses 
to his nose, was speUing out the words for, I sup- 
pose, the fiftieth time in his Hfe. I inquired if the 
Protestants of the neighbourhood did not resent 
the challenge, the rather bloodthirsty menace 
impHed by this inscription. He put away his 
glasses, looked up with a smile, and answered, to 
my considerable surprise, that among the many 
names of patriots engraved on the stone was a 
plentiful number of fire-eating Protestants. 

Of the four names at the four corners, at foot 
of the statues, two are Protestants — Thomas 
Davis, whose verse is quoted above, and the famous 
WoKe Tone. Among the hundred or so patriots 
whose names are enumerated under the three 
memorable years, 1803, 1848, and 1867, twenty- 
three were certainly Protestants, and perhaps there 
were others, for it is by no means assured that 



142 MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 

every other name on the pHnth stands for a Catholic. 
But twenty-three of the glorious host were un- 
doubted Protestants. 

John Mitchell, whose fiery words are cut into 
the stone, was a Protestant, and among the other 
Protestants I found such names as Lord Edward 
FitzGerald, General Holt, the Rev. John Mitchell, 
and Catherine Countess of Queensbury, the last a 
very gallant " man." 

We are apt to imagine, because a political organ- 
ization in the north of Ireland has shouted the 
false rendering so vociferously and so continually 
into our EngUsh ears, that NationaHsm in Ireland 
is only and entirely a synonym for Jesuitical Catho- 
licism. But here in Cork is a monument that cor- 
rects this false notion. It was a vitriolic Protestant 
who wanted to hurl the fires of hell in England's 
face, and a Rudyard Kipling of Irish Protestantism 
who exclaimed : — 

Be sure the great God never planned 
For slumbering slaves, a home so grand. 

Protestantism, with aU due deference to so 
eminent an authority as Sir Edward Carson — 
who, by the way, was once alarmed by fire in the 
city of Cork — is not destructive of nationahty and 
patriotism. 

As we walked away the colonel told me that such 
language as burns on the monument is now com- 



MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 143 

pletely out of fashion. There is very little rhetoric in 
modern Irish politics, he told me ; business men 
have taken the matter out of the hands of priests 
and poets, and these hard-headed gentlemen discuss 
Home Rule from the standpoint of trade ; it is 
a matter of business. 

He smiled at the idea of Catholic intolerance, 
and told me he had no better or more agreeable 
friends in the neighbourhood than these libelled 
Catholics. " AU that sort of thing — ^you'll forgive 
me for saying so — ^is tommy-rot." My stay in Cork 
confirmed this judgment. 

I met at the house where I was staying just out- 
side the town — a house on a wooded hiU whose 
windows and balconies look towards the sunset 
across a curving river and a wide stretch of meadow- 
land ghmmering far away to fold upon fold of distant 
hills — a most amiable and cheerful company com- 
posed of Catholics and Protestants. The whole 
atmosphere of that house, with its babies and 
flowers, its pets and toys, its music and Hterature, 
its hospitality and its cheerful domesticity, was 
quite charming and convincing ; one could not 
mix with the family and its guests, could not share 
in that kind and hospitable Hfe, beheving for a 
moment the wicked calumny of Catholic intoler- 
ance. It would have been like suspecting an EngHsh 
hostess of steaHng from one's dressing-case, or an 
EngHsh host of cheating at cards. 



144 MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 

To know the Irish people one must stay in their 
houses and share in their domestic Ufe. One must 
not merely discuss political opinions, but must 
pay visits to the nursery, perambulate the garden, 
go a-shopping with one's hostess, take pleasure in 
the pictures and furniture, if possible make toffee, 
or toast barm-brach, at the schoolroom fire. The 
home-life of Ireland, among the upper classes, the 
middle classes, and the peasantry, seems to me 
entirely beautiful and pure ; here and there one 
may be conscious of modern vulgarity, an en- 
croachment of Smart ideas ; here and there one 
may be harassed by a note of provincialism, or 
troubled by an effort to obscure normal simplicity 
with a show of prodigahty to impress the Enghsh 
visitor ; but on the whole, whithersoever I went, 
my reception was kind and warm-hearted ; I was 
made to feel myself a welcome guest, and I en- 
countered in most genial, kindly homes men and 
women who were grateful to God for existence and 
devoted to domestic Ufe. 

At a dinner-party in this particular house there 
was a white-haired but young-looking professional 
man, whose low voice and modest demeanour, 
whose rather timid and self-effacing manner, for 
some reason or another, suggested to my mind the 
character of Tom Pinch. I discovered that he is 
devoted to children, but has never married ; 
he supports by his profession his mother and sisters, 



MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 145 

living a very quiet and retired Hfe, except for politics 
in which he plays an occasional and somewhat lead- 
ing part. 

I became better acquainted with this agreeable 
person, and we went a trip together to the beautiful 
harbour of Queenstown. He took a great dehght 
in pointing out to me the lovely views from our 
carriage window, speaking softly and endearingly, 
as one who has come to patriotism through the 
door of nature worship. He loves the great river 
winding down to the sea, the rolling hills, the 
deep woods, the fields that glow Hke emeralds 
in sunUght, and the little whitewashed villages 
that nestle at the river's edge. He loves them 
because they are lovable ; and because they 
are lovable he loves Ireland, loves her as the 
gracious creation of the God he worships, and 
as the land of the people and the race whose 
rehgion and sentiments his soul has inherited with 
its body. 

" I have just received," he said to me, " a letter 
from a very old emigrant in the United States." 
He drew the letter from his pocket. " I think you 
will be touched by the love it expresses for Ireland, 
and struck, too, by the change which time has 
effected in the anger and hard thoughts of ancient 
days. Would you like to hear it ? Shall I read it 
to you ? " 

And he read the whole letter, and afterwards he 



146 MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 

copied out for me the passage which I here set down 
in print : — 

I see that Churchill is out strong for Home 
Rule. God speed their efforts. I saw that Red- 
mond had an accident ; I hope he is now better 
and that he will live to preside over a Parliament 
House in Dubhn. It is about time that England 
should do right. Many is the prayer I prayed for 
Ireland for sixty years, and if some of these 
prayers were heard I would now be sorry for 
England. But now that I am getting old I am 
praying God to forgive my enemies. How often 
during our Civil War I thought, if it could 
be possible, how much better it would be if it was 
a war with England instead of a war between 
brothers, and how much more " ginger " we five 
brothers whom our mother gave to the Southern 
Confederacy could have put into the fight to 
settle old scores. Well, thanks be to God, our 
country is now at peace and offers a good Hving 
for aU who are not too lazy to work for it. 

In my opinion there is no such country on 
earth, and with Home Rule for Ireland there is 
no reason why you should not do as well. God 
helps those who try to help themselves. 

He spoke of the love for Ireland which haunts 
the emigrant in aUen lands. Men go away, earn 
high wages, live a fuUer and more exciting life. 



MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 147 

but their hearts are with Ireland. Even when the 
habit of America has hardened in their nature, and 
when to return and Hve in Ireland would be some- 
thing of a torture, the emigrant is still conscious 
of a love and a reverence for his homeland which 
is almost reHgious in its character. This love is 
indestructible. It is the monument more lasting 
than brass or stone. 

" I often think," he said, " of the letters which 
are continually Crossing the great Atlantic from 
America, and which find their way into our smallest 
and remotest villages. How much love they con- 
tain ! How much patriotism ! I have seen many 
of those letters, and they quicken my love for 
Ireland more than all the speeches of politicians 
on our sufferings and wrongs. They are so wist- 
ful with longing, so profound with loyalty to the 
home. I suppose many emigrants of other lands 
send money to the old folks, but I wonder if so 
many send so much as our poor Irish scattered 
all over the world. Home Rule would not stop, 
but it would check emigration, and, what is so im- 
portant, it would alter the character of that exodus. 
I think if we felt ourselves to be a free people and 
not a subject people, our young men would go more 
cheerfully to other lands, would hold themselves 
there with more pride, and would hasten their return 
to the motherland. I feel sure that all the love 
for Ireland which now exists wistfully and rather 



148 MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNTUS 

tragically in other countries would become more 
vital and glad and serviceable to Irish nationality, 
if Ireland were free." 

It was plain from what he told me that the bitter- 
ness and hate of the older generation of emigrants 
is dying out. Irishmen recognize that modern 
England, innocent of past bloodshed, extortion, 
and cruelty, is striving her hardest to restore the 
broken fortunes of their motherland. They have 
a growing respect for this new England, but they 
cannot love her and they cannot come back proudly 
from across the seas until Ireland is as free as 
South Africa, Canada, and Australia. 

Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in some ways surely one 
of the most original, penetrating, and wholesome 
of modern thinkers, has defined as England's failure 
in the government of Ireland her determination to 
ignore Ireland's sense of nationality. He says : — 

" I am quite certain that Scotland is a nation ; 
I am quite certain that nationaUty is the key of 
Scotland; I am quite certain that all our success 
with Scotland has been due to the fact that we 
have in spirit treated it as a nation. I am quite 
certain that Ireland is a nation. I am quite cer- 
tain that nationahty is the key of Ireland; I am 
quite certain that aU our failure in Ireland arose 
from the fact that we could not in spirit treat it as 
a nation. It would be difiicult to find, even among 
the innumerable examples that exist, a stronger 



MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS 149 

example of the immensely superior importance of 
sentiment, to what is called practicality, than this 
case of the two sister nations. It is not that we 
have encouraged a Scotchman to be rich ; it is not 
that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be active ; 
it is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to 
be free. It is that we have quite definitely en- 
couraged a Scotsman to be Scotch." 

The reality of an Irishman's love for Ireland was 
brought home to my mind on many occasions, but 
by no one, perhaps, so simply and convincingly as 
by this man in Cork who spoke of Irish emigrants 
so tenderly, and expressed so earnestly his hope for 
a united and contented British Empire. 

I learned from this quiet and thoughtful man 
to realize how great a blessing Hes in store for 
England when the vast numbers of Irishmen in the 
United States feel themselves related to the British 
Empire. If any man loves England, and has known 
the hunger for England in a distant country, he 
wiU understand the heart of the Irish emigrant. 

Over thirty-one thousand emigrants left Ireland 
last year. 



CHAPTER Vin 
PETTY LARCENIES 

SOON after my return from Ireland I was 
talking one day to an English clergyman 
whose pohtical judgment I imagined to be as just 
and tolerant as his culture appeared to be wide and 
liberal. What was my surprise, then, to find this 
amiable, broad-minded gentleman convinced, and 
unshakable in his conviction, that CathoHc tyranny 
not only wiU become a fact under Home Rule, 
but is actually a fact at the present time ! 

I gave him overwhelming proof to the contrary, 
and pressed him to tell me how he has brought 
himself to beHeve so unworthy an imputation on 
Irish character. 

" I cannot teU you," he repHed, " from whom I 
get my information ; but I have in my possession, 
sent to me from authoritative men in Ireland, in- 
numerable cases of CathoHc tyranny towards 
Protestants. The documents are private and con- 
fidential or I would show them to you. They have 
made a profound impression upon me. Yes, they are 
printed documents." 

150 



PETTY LARCENIES 161 

Does this mean, one would like to know, that 
Protestants in Ireland are secretly circularizing the 
clergy of England, and in their zeal for the Union 
are blackening the character of their feUow-Chris- 
tians in Ireland ? If this is the case, I can imagine 
nothing more unworthy in the long unworthy 
history of Protestantism in Ireland. Cromwell's 
bloody club was an honest human weapon. But 
these whispered, confidential, and backstair scan- 
dahzings of a miserable sectarianism can proceed 
only from the Father of Lies. To associate these 
petty larcenies of character, these contemptible 
and furtive slanders of clerical backbiters with 
anything consecrated by the Character of Jesus 
is an infamy, almost a blasphemy. 

Let me give the reader, in this place, the written 
statement of a Presbyterian minister living in the 
south of Ireland who has never once wavered in 
his allegiance to Protestantism, and who is now 
at the present time as out of harmony with Catholic 
doctrine as when he began his ministry. 

The following letter was written hurriedly in 
answer to certain questions I addressed to my 
correspondent, but it gives an honest man's verdict, 
clearly, simply, and convincingly. 

" It is difficult," writes this Presbyterian minister, 
" to get behind the reserve that shuts out the priest 
from ordinary social Hfe. But it has been my 
pecuhar privilege tp have done so in one or two 



152 PETTY LARCENIES 

instances, and to have gained confidences that 
I greatly prize. I have made close personal friends 
among the priests, and I am glad to be able to say, 
from what inside knowledge I have, that morally 
there is no finer type of man in Ireland. 

" The priest is a good fellow ; and as a rule has 
none of those bitter prejudices (perhaps I should 
say none of that bitter intolerance) that so often 
disfigures his Protestant confrere. 

" There is in every corner of Munster a Protes- 
tantism — more or less numerous — ^but always watch- 
ful and suspicious of Romanism, and especially of 
the priest. And in my opinion there is no stronger 
testimony to the moral worth of the Priesthood 
than the fact that that Protestantism has no word 
of disapproval for the priest individually. 

" At our last Presbytery meeting in Co. Kerry 
(September, 1911) the local lay representatives of the 
Presbyterian Church (gathered from all over Kerry) 
were asked by one of the ministers : ' Is there any 
interference with you on the part of the priests, or 
any hindrance to your work because you are Protes- 
tants ? ' — or words to that effect. And the answer, 
prompt and ready from each one, was, ' None.' 

" Our Presbytery covers the counties of Cork 
and Kerry, and part of Waterford, and never for 
the last twenty years, while I have been a member, 
has there been a single complaint of priestly inter- 
ference or intolerance of any kind. 



PETTY LARCENIES 163 

"As to the priest's spiritual influence, my 
opinion is that it is greater to-day than ever, 
because it is more enlightened and spiritual. 

" The priest does not exercise to-day the influence 
that he did formerly in social and poHtical affairs. 

*' But those Catholics who disagree with the 
priests in their poHtical views are at the same time 
loyal and true to them spiritually. The priest 
himself knows this and readily admits that they 
are ' good CathoHcs.' 

*' And while it is difficult for the priest to keep 
out of poHtics, as it is for the parson to keep out 
of pohtics, the knowledge of the spiritual loyalty 
of his opponents has caused him to moderate his 
opinions and to restrain his opposition. And under 
Home Rule this will become a great national asset 
and will either rend the Church or drive the priest 
out of pontics altogether. It has had the latter 
result in Cork, where the division in the Irish party 
is most felt. 

" In seeking to exercise his influence, therefore, 
the priest has been compelled to work along spiritual 
lines ; and any speeches that I have read by the 
politically minded priests of the South would not 
go to show that they seek to exercise a greater 
influence over their people than our leading political 
parsons in Belfast and the North." 

On the subject of 'moraHty he writes : — 

" The priests and nuns are watchful and in close 



154 PETTY LARCENIES 

touch with the people. And the people themselves 
have great natural gifts for amusements. And 
that seems to me to protect them from grossness 
and sordidness. And besides, reMgion has a real 
restraining power in their Hves." 

He speaks of Protestants who have stayed as 
paying-guests in Roman Catholic Homes, and 
mentions the impression made upon them by 
young people who, after a night of dancing or card- 
playing, go off to Mass at six o'clock in the morning 
before beginning the day's duties. 

" Indeed," he goes on, " some of the young 
men connected with my own congregation who 
came here from Glasgow and have become Roman 
Catholics have told me that it was the place given 
to religion and its influence on the lives of their 
Roman CathoUc companions that induced them 
to change. 

" Personally I am at the other extreme from 
Romanism. But this has been my experience. 
Many young men in the city have joined the Roman 
CathoHc Church, and while I know that Protes- 
tantism has ascribed less worthy motives, yet I 
believe that in this case also there must have 
been some very sufficient cause to make them brave 
the anger of parents and relatives and friends. I 
have a very high opinion of the moral Hfe of the 
Catholic young men of this city. They are a credit 
to their Church. 



PETTY LARCENIES 155 

"Under Home Rule nothing will be different, 
nothing very much for a time : but everything wiU 
become different. 

" There will be no intolerance, unless what is 
provoked by the insensate hate of a few in Ulster. 
But I have very Httle fear of that even. . . . 

" What I have said of the priests, the people, 
and their religion will show you that I have no 
fear whatever for Protestantism, except that it may 
become merged in the predominant Romanism, as 
it has so often done before. 

" Of course there is a considerable outcry on the 
part of the old ascendancy party who are still imbued 
with the opinion that it is their right to rule, but 
they will find their rightful place by and by, and 
wiU become a great strength in the community. 

"For, should prosperity follow the introduction 
of Home Rule, as we have every reason to beKeve 
it wiU, the Protestants will by reason of their 
superior business organizations and methods benefit 
more than the CathoHcs. 

" Protestantism in the South at least has no 
fear of Home Rule, and would gladly welcome 
a settlement of that much-discussed question." 

Thus writes an honest, just man. Throughout 
my own wanderings in Ireland I encountered no 
single case of CathoHc intolerance, and even by 
those Protestants who are opposed to Home Rule 



166 PETTY LARCENIES 

with real energy, I never heard the CathoHc priest 
maligned. I was told that he is often a mere 
rustic, an unmannerly bumpkin, an ignorant, 
common person swollen by a sense of Apostohc 
importance — this from people incHned to emphasize 
social superiority — but not once, face to face with 
the actual facts of Irish life, did I hear one word 
of attack concerning Catholic intolerance or the 
morahty of the CathoHc priest. 

If the reader will allow me to do so, I should like 
to make what members of Parliament caU a personal 
statement. I have written so often on religious 
questions that I really owe to those among my 
present readers who are acquainted with my former 
work something of an explanation as touching the 
position I take up on this question of CathoHc 
and Protestant in Ireland. 

Until I visited Ireland my impression was that 
Irish CathoHc priests resembled ItaHan CathoHc 
priests, Spanish CathoHc priests, and the more 
ignorant of French CathoHc priests. I went to the 
country under this impression, and with the further 
notion that all the backwardness, poverty, laziness, 
and discontent which I had been so often told 
existed in the south of Ireland was largely attribut- 
able to the influence of priests. 

I have inherited, and experience of the world has 
deepened, an almost violent antipathy to the 
Roman Church. Occasionally I have encountered, 



PETTY LARCENIES 157 

in England and abroad, Catholics whom I liked very 
much, CathoUcs who seemed to me charming, 
dehghtful, and quite sensible people. But my 
aversion from Rome remained constant. The 
dogmas of that Church have ever seemed to me only 
one more degree preposterous and unholy than so 
great a part of her history has been villainous and 
detestable. 

In Ireland I came face to face with this problem. 
In the South, where CathoHc influence is supreme, 
the people are almost enchanting in their sweetness 
of disposition, entirely admirable in the beauty 
and contentment of their domestic Hfe, wonderful 
beyond all other nations in the wholesomeness and 
sanctity of their chastity. In this place I make 
no comparison of the South with the North — ^that 
I reserve for a later chapter ; my present purpose 
is to speak solely of the South. Instead of a lazy, 
thriftless, discontented, and squaHd people — ^as I 
had imagined them to be — the Irish of the South 
won my sympathy and compelled my admiration 
by quaHties the very opposite. It seemed to me 
that these hard-working, simple-Hving, family- 
loving, and most warm-hearted people had done 
what we in England have largely failed to do, even 
in our villages, to wit, solved the problem of life. 
The charm which every traveller feels in the south 
of Ireland is the character of the Irish people ; and 
my investigation forced me to the judgment that 



158 PETTY LARCENIES 

this character is the culture of Irish Catholicism. 
My problem lay, therefore, in squaring the admira- 
tion I felt for these gracious people with my detesta- 
tion of the Church which has guarded Irish character 
from the dawn of its history. 

I was compelled to admit that I had greatly 
misjudged the CathoHc Church. My conscience 
would not let me fence with this conviction. I saw 
that I had blundered by unconsciously entertain- 
ing the foolish notion that because one branch of 
the Cathohc Church is scandalous, or one era of 
Catholic history is abominable, therefore every 
branch is scandalous, and every era of CathoHc 
history to the end of time must remain abominable. 

I came to see vividly and clearly what most of 
us have always suspected, that it is the character 
of the man, and not the set of dogmas to which 
he pins his faith, that makes the Christian. What 
a man thinks, what a man beheves in the region 
of dogma, seems to exercise almost no influence 
whatever upon the Christianity of his Hfe. It does 
not matter, says Goethe, what you believe, but how 
you beHeve. It is the spirit in which^ a man gives 
his heart to God, not the intellectual attitude of 
his theology, which determines the character of his 
life. I met many CathoHcs aU over Ireland, and 
in only one or two cases did I feel any sense of 
uneasiness or discontent in their company. Over 
and over again I was humbled and abased by find- 



PETTY LARCENIES 159 

ing how immeasurably mean was my experience of 
spiritual life in comparison with the lives of these 
humble and ignorant CathoHcs, who love God with 
the clinging trustfuhiess of Httle children. 

But my aversion from CathoHc creed remains. 
I have gone once more patiently, and with an honest 
effort to be just, into the question of Catholic 
dogma, and I find myself more puzzled than ever 
before in my Hfe to account for the fact of any 
man gifted with even a Httle knowledge being able 
to accept, to accept so that they subdue his life, 
these amazing and humiliating superstitions of 
magic- worship. 

Such, then, is my position. Intellectually I am 
as out of sympathy with CathoHcs as I should be 
out of sympathy with a man who beHeves the 
world to be flat. I can no easier get on intellectual 
good terms with a CathoHc than with an orthodox 
Hindu. InteUectuaUy I am much more in sym- 
pathy with Mussulmans than with CathoHcs. No 
willingness to be gracious and modest and con- 
ciHatory can save me, in the company of CathoHc 
theologians, from a feeHng if not of scorn, at any 
rate of amazement and, I fear, of pity. 

Nevertheless, I should feel myseK guilty of a 
crime if I wrote one single word with the object of 
weakening an Irishman's faith in his Church. So 
beautiful is the influence of that Church, so alto- 
gether sincere and attractive is the spiritual life of 



160 PETTY LARCENIES 

Catholic Ireland, that I for one, rather than lift 
a finger to disturb it, like the man in the parable 
would stand afar off, bow my head upon my breast, 
and utter the honest prayer, Grod be merciful to 
me a sinner. 

Let the Protestant reader ask himself this ques- 
tion, Whether his admiration goes to the Cathohc 
priest Hving with the peasants of Ireland, sharing 
their poverty, and devoting himself to the beauty 
and chastity of Ireland's spiritual Hfe, or to the 
Irish clerical poMtician who secretly slanders in 
England these feUow-Christians, with no other 
object in mind than to preserve his own social 
ascendancy ? 



CHAPTER IX 
A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

AFTER spending many weeks in Ireland, after 
going here, there, and nearly everywhere, after 
meeting numerous people circumstanced to know 
the truth of Irish social life, I returned to England 
with not one single case of CathoUc persecution in 
my notebook. Among all the good and earnest 
Protestants I met in Ireland, none could tell me a 
single story of CathoHc bigotry. It is most im- 
portant for the Hberal-minded EngHsh Protestant 
who reads this chapter to remember that no Irish 
Protestant ever complained to me of CathoHc per- 
secution, or hinted at CathoHc intolerance. 

But now the case is different. A friend in 
England to whom I had expressed my conviction 
that CathoHc persecution is a rather shabby Wolf, 
a rather frayed and tattered Bogy manufactured 
in Belfast with chemises, comfortable Atlantic 
Hners, and pocket-handkerchiefs, has sent me 
certain printed matter which witnesses to the fact, 
so he holds, of CathoHc persecution. My friend 
begs me to find time for the reading of his docu- 

L 161 



162 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

ments. He is sure that I shall be persuaded, 
being an honest man, that CathoHc persecution is 
a very true and very awful fact of Irish social life. 

Now, I rejoice in these documents with all my 
heart because they prove in a most remarkable 
manner the very opposite truth of which my friend 
is convinced. They prove that Irish Catholics are 
the most tolerant and pohte people in the world, 
and that at least some Irish Protestants are the 
most impoHtic people on the face of this kindly 
earth. I could wish nothing better for my thesis 
than space to print these extraordinary documents 
in extenso. 

This case of Cathohc persecution concerns the 
town of Limerick. The martyr in question is a 
Protestant medical man, Dr. Joseph Long. He 
has been stoned in the streets, eggs have been 
thrown at him, flour has been emptied upon him 
from top-storey windows, crowds have followed 
howHng at his heels, and jarveys have refused to 
drive him on their cars. Since his arrival in 
Limerick, an event which occurred in 1897, down 
to the year 1903, this gentleman endured so merci- 
less a persecution that it is a matter of miracle he 
is still ahve — ^not merely alive, but apparently 
satisfied with his life's work. Since 1904, so I gather, 
he has hved in peace, his only cross the jarveys' 
absolute refusal to take him as a fare. His real 
martyrdom, therefore, is eight years old, a part 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 163 

rather of ancient history than contemporary politics. 
But do not let the reader minimize it on account 
of its age. The same thing might occur again. 
Under Home Rule it might become even worse. 
And the story of it is now being handed about in 
England. 

The story is this : An EngHsh body of people 
known as the Society for Irish Church Missions, with 
ofl&ces at 11 Buckingham Street, Strand, London, 
seeks to make proselytes of Roman Cathohcs in 
Ireland. It beheves, so I gather from its documents, 
that the Cathohcs of Ireland are outside the pale 
of Christian Salvation; and, being moved with a 
great compassion for these doomed miUions, it sends 
forth missionaries to Ireland, just as other societies 
send missionaries to China and the West Coast of 
Africa. Irish Cathohcs are regarded by this Enghsh 
society as heathen, and as heathen they are accord- 
ingly treated. Whether it would be nearer to 
Christ's instruction for these good and wealthy 
people to spend their money in feeding the poor and 
hungry of London, we will not inquire. They are 
convinced that they should employ people to con- 
vert Irish Cathohcs to their own particular notion 
of Enghsh Protestantism. 

Dr. Joseph Long, employed by this society, was 
sent to open a Medical Mission in Limerick. He 
took a house, exhibited a dispensary notice-board 
announcing the hours of "free attendance," and. 



164 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

in his own words, " opened our door and awaited 
results, in full confidence that God, who had guided 
and provided for us so far, would also bring us 
into contact with needy souls, and send us patients." 
He was not disappointed. " In the quietest possible 
manner," he relates, " the Mission commenced its 
double work of ministering to the sick and suffering, 
and of pointing them to Jesus the great and only 
Physician of the soul." This double work, accord- 
ing to Dr. Long, has been wonderfully blessed by 
God. 

The method of the Mission may be gathered 
from these words written by the doctor : " The 
average attendance at the dispensary each day is 
about forty — some mornings we have over sixty 
patients to attend to. They are first interested 
and entertained by Mr. Hare in the waiting-room ; 
then, in turn, I have the privilege of dealing with 
the'm individually in my consulting-room ; then 
* Sister Millie ' takes charge of them, either dressing 
them in the surgery or making up their prescrip- 
tions in the dispensary, and as they leave, giving 
them a parting word of encouragement. They are 
foUowed to their own homes by our united prayer 
that God may bless the message they have heard 
and lead them to a Uvely faith in the Lord Jesus." 

Certain priests in Limerick resented the doctor's 
methods. One rather violent priest — I restrict my- 
self entirely to Dr. Long's account of his martyr- 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 166 

dom — denounced the missioner from the pulpit and 
publicly rebuked him face to face. CathoHcs were 
forbidden to visit the dispensary. A parish priest 
wrote a letter to one of the newspapers, concerning 
Dr. Long : "As priest having charge of the district 
where he has estabHshed himself, I feel it my duty 
to state pubHcly that he is here for proselytizing 
purposes. Dr. Long is simply using the noble pro- 
fession to which he belongs as the agent of a Society 
that has for its object the perversion of Irish 
CathoUcs, and the sooner our poor are warned 
against this insidious attempt on their Faith the 
better." 

The result of this skirmishing was vulgar strife. 
Dr. Long was boo'd in the street, he was stoned, 
he was mocked, he was called " old souper." The 
little children marched to and fro singing, " We'll 
hang Dr. Long on a sour apple tree." The women 
scolded him. The men despised him. People who 
attended the dispensary were roughly handled. In 
one street-ruction the police made arrests, and the 
case was tried in court. The Resident Magistrate, 
a Protestant, is reported to have said on this occa- 
sion : "It had been proved, not by witnesses, but 
by Dr. Long himseK, that he was the paid emissary 
or agent of a certain Society ... a paid official 
coming there for the purpose of proselytism, and 
there was nothing that roused indignation more 
than that word," You must understand, by the 



166 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

way, why it is the word proselytism arouses such 
passionate indignation in Ireland. It is not only 
that the Irish are obstinate enough to consider 
themselves Christians, but because during the great 
Famine Protestants from England offered soup to 
the starving people on condition that they renounced 
the Cathohc Church. Hence the bitterest term of 
contempt in the Irish CathoHc's vocabulary — " old 
souper." And to-day Protestant ladies in Ireland 
able to pay good wages, employ Irish servant-girls 
in their houses, and as soon as the girls are accus- 
tomed to their rich and comfortable life, begin the 
work of sapping their Catholic allegiance. Nearly 
all the " converts " from Rome are these poor 
servant-girls. That is why the Irishman regards 
proselytism with such bitter contempt and with 
such vehement detestation. 

On another occasion the Lord Chief Justice of 
Ireland, in charging the Grand Jury at Limerick, 
made the following remarks : — 

I see that the people of this city have been 
somewhat excited by the presence of a Dr. Long. 
... He is an agent of what I believe is described 
as the Irish Church Mission to Roman Catholics, 
He has been mobbed by the people. Now, of 
course, any violence on the part of the people 
is wholly indefensible ; it is much to be depre- 
cated. But if the people would take my advice 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 167 

. . . they would leave these agents of that Society 
entirely alone. . . . They would not make mar- 
tyrs of them, because, gentlemen, if they make 
martjnrs of them they only secure that the 
monetary stream comes in greater volume from 
England. . . . The Protestant community, the 
respectable Protestant community of this city 
and of this country do not in any way associate 
themselves with these attempts. . . . The Irish 
Church Missions are supported in England by 
people who are very well-meaning, who are very 
rehgious, but who have no conception of the 
worthlessness of the Irish Church Missions in this 
country. 

Dr. Long entertains a different notion of his 
place in the cosmos. He quotes in his book, from 
one of " the leading Christian papers," the following 
lines about himself — ^not because he is proud of 
the tribute, but because they give all praise to Him 
who is " our Life, our Sweetness, and our Hope " : — 

I see a warrior of the Word, 

Calm 'mid the crowd's uproar ; 
A Perseus, with a better sword 

Than Perseus ever bore. 
I see him stand amid the storm — 
Of noble port and manly form — 

To play the manly part. 
That clear, calm light is in his eye, 
To dare, direct, defeat, defy ; 
Light from the fire that cannot die, 

God kindled in his heart. 



168 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

Now, I ask the English Protestant reader to con- 
sider what his feehngs would be if a society com- 
posed of men of science organized in his particular 
parish a dispensary, advertised free attendance for 
the poor, and proceeded to use that dispensary for 
teaching people not to believe their religion ? There 
are many honest men of science who regard Chris- 
tianity as a gross superstition, and who thoroughly 
believe that clericalism is a considerable obstacle 
in the path of rational progress ; suppose these 
men adopted the profession of medicine, ministered 
as doctors to the poor of an EngHsh parish, and 
disseminated among their patients secular, lation- 
alistic, and infidel notions. What would be the 
feeling in that parish ? 

There are certain Protestants — happily growing 
fewer every year, and never representative of the 
true Protestantism — ^who, in their enthusiasm for the 
truth of their own creeds, do not often enough pause 
to consider the feehngs of people to whom other 
creeds appear equally true, equally precious. It is 
one thing to write critically or scornfully of these 
creeds, as scornfully as you please ; but it is a 
different thing altogether for a missionary to em- 
ploy an active propaganda among the Christians he 
is seeking to detach from one Church to another — 
if that can ever be a rightful employment of mis- 
sionary zeal. Such a man, for instance, as Dr, 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 169 

Joseph Long, " of noble port and manly form," 
of whom his poet says — 

That clear, calm light is in his eye, 
To dare, direct, defeat, defy, 

is evidently the very last person in the world 
who would exercise those quahties of spirit which are 
necessary to the "winning" of souls. He beHeves 
that God is yearning to save CathoHcs, he boldly 
confesses himself a missionary sent by God, and 
he goes forth " to dare, direct, defeat, defy." And 
what is the consequence of this martial spirit ? 
Mr. George Wyndham said of him in the House of 
Commons : " It is to be regretted that Dr. Long, 
or rather the Society which employs him, should 
conscientiously think it right to afford gratuitous 
medical attendance, with the avowed object of 
making converts in the midst of a Roman Catholic 
population." Even Dr. Long says of himself : 
" Many acquaintances were shy about being seen 
in my company, and the prevailing impression on all 
sides was that I was not wanted there at all." 
Finally, if you would see the attitude of this per- 
secuted man towards the Chiu-ch he is set to over- 
throw, reflect upon these words written by his own 
hand in the book which contains the laudatory 
verses quoted above : — 

The Word oi* God and the Holy Spirit of God 
alone can successfully overcome the power of 



170 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

Rome as a system full of arrogance and hypocrisy, 
of superstition and idolatry, of tyranny and 
darkness, and deliver from her paralysing slavery 
human souls, leading them into the enjoyment of 
the Hght and Hberty of the children of God. 

Is it not manifest that a man who can write such 
words, who can issue such a book — ^his own portrait 
forming the frontispiece — ^is the very last person 
in the world to attract men and women to the 
beauty and gentleness, the humihty and sweet 
reasonableness of the Christian Hfe ? Is it not 
manifest that for a man of this kind to go a-prose- 
lytizing among a Christian community whose 
Christianity has flowed into aU the nations of 
Europe, a Christianity which has preserved their 
nationahty through centuries of the grossest tyranny, 
and has so consecrated their kindness of heart, their 
docility, and their chastity that they are now things 
proverbial in the two hemispheres — ^is it not mani- 
fest that such a man and such proselytism — ^how- 
ever unintentionally — are in the nature of insult 
and affront, far more hkely to do incalculable harm, 
to create the most damaging impression, to stir up 
violent and angry feelings, than to spread the diffi- 
cult but only saving gospel of sweetness and light ? 

Compare this gentleman's view of OathoHcism 
with the opinion of those two heroic and well- 
known missionaries to the Congo, the Rev. John 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 171 

Harris and his wife. " Both Mr. and Mrs. Harris," 
says an interviewer in the Daily Chronicle, " bear 
testimony to the wonderful results of the Catholic 
missions in the French and German Congo. . . . 
' With regard to industrial progress,' said Mr. 
Harris, ' the Cathohc missions are far in advance 
of the Protestant missions.' " CathoUcs at least 
may claim to be treated as Christians. 

Let EngHsh Protestants honestly say whether 
they would permit a double-working Roman Catholic 
propaganda, such as this, in their own parishes. 
Would they not hotly resent it if Irish CathoHcs 
came to England to proselytize their poor people 
by means of gratuitous medical attendance, to teach 
those poor people that Protestantism is " full 
of arrogance and hypocrisy, of superstition and 
idolatry, of tjnranny and darkness " ? Would 
they not feel justified in condemning the poor who 
used such a dispensary, and would there not be 
Kensitites enough in the district to work up brawls 
and riots in the streets ? 

This apparently famous, almost classical example 
of Cathohc intolerance, proves, I think, the extra- 
ordinary meekness of the Irish people. A Roman 
Cathohc playing Dr. Long's role in England would 
be driven from piUar to post, would be hounded out 
of the place, would be fortunate to escape without 
a broken Hmb or a cracked skull. But Dr. Long 
has been in Limerick since 1897, the eggs and stones 



172 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

ceased to hurtle in 1903, and he is there stiU, and 
as long as the Society which employs him is in 
existence, he is likely to remain in his double 
character of doctor and proselytizer. Moreover, 
he appears to be happy, satisfied, and comfortable. 
Time may possibly plump that " noble port and 
manly form," age perhaps may dim that many 
d'd light in his eye, but the good doctor, faithful 
to his precarious post, wiU still " deal with " 
patients in the dispensary, stiU make a dyspepsia 
the bridge for a heart to heart talk on the sub- 
ject of the Scarlet Woman, and still address 
dehghted parlour-meetings in the comfortable 
houses of Christian England which contain sup- 
porters of the Irish Church Missions. Hear his 
last words : — 

I wish to thank with my whole heart aU those 
dear friends everywhere who have supported the 
work in prayer to God. The work is God's, and 
we are all, whether directly or indirectly con- 
nected with it, co-workers together with Him. 
He has graciously answered the prayers of His 
children, and given us the Victory, and " To 
Him be the glory for ever." Amen. 

I cannot think that any truly religious or fair- 
minded Protestant will pass a verdict on this story 
of persecution unfavourable to Irish CathoHcs. 
Dr. Long's quarrel with the dogmas of Rome cannot 



A CASE OF PERSECUTION 173 

be greater than my own — I can believe that few 
men more heartily than myself disHke the Roman 
version of Christianity or more thoroughly regret 
the superstitions of its rites — but I have read this 
story of the Limerick Medical Mission with humiha- 
tion, with anger, and with shame, read it with 
something more than sorrow and compassion for 
misguided zeal. 

Take, for instance — and then let us have done 
with this sad business — ^Dr. Long's reflection on the 
Limerick jarveys' refusal to drive him on their 
cars : — 

I have borne this petty and insulting persecu- 
tion, trusting that God would overrule it for 
His glory, and use even this car-boycott to help 
in bringing many in this city to a conviction of 
sin, to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I know perfectly well what Dr. Long means, but 
thus expressed is not this paragraph likely to seem 
to an ordinary man the sentiment of a sanctimo- 
niousness which he has long been taught to suspect ? 

Dr. Long is not insincere ; it is, indeed, his very 
sincerity that is so dangerous. He is no doubt a 
good man, an earnest man, an honest man ; but I 
think he is clearly misguided. An arrant hypocrite 
would do no harm, but a true and earnest man, mis- 
guided and zealous in a wrong direction, can do 
little but mischief. He must misrepresent, albeit 



174 A CASE OF PERSECUTION 

unconsciously, the Character of Christ; he must 
ahenate, albeit unwillingly, the sympathy of men 
with whom all Christians should be desirous of 
working for the victory of the spiritual life. 

The attraction of Christ is universal; anything 
which tends to make it sectarian, anything which 
tends to make it unattractive, is to be deplored and 
condemned. I am convinced that every liberal- 
minded Protestant in England and Ireland will take 
this view of the matter and support my criticism of 
Dr. Long's pamphlet. It is of immense importance, 
when materialism is everywhere degrading and 
brutaMzing Hfe, for all who profess and call them- 
selves Christians to make religion beautiful and 
attractive in the eyes of mankind. 

With no fear of its effect upon my argument, 
rather the other way, I set this historical instance 
of CathoHc intolerance — the only one I have found 
— ^in the midst of a book inspired both by admiration 
and affection for the Irish people. 



CHAPTER X 
THE FINE FLOWER 

AMONG the very agreeable people in the south 
of Ireland who represent what one may 
designate as the English Character, it is but seldom 
that the traveller encounters a virulent or an 
irreconcilable attitude towards Home Rule. They 
have not a sip of Orange in their blue veins. 

Their attitude to the question of Irish politics 
bears a family hkeness to the attitude of our own 
well-off people in England towards labour ques- 
tions. They regard Irish poUticians rather con- 
temptuously as agitators, they believe that at the 
back of the national movement there is a sinister 
plot to compass the downfall of the British Empire, 
they quote, not vehemently, but sorrowfully, the 
most bloodthirsty passages from an antique Fenian 
oratory, and they assure you with real honesty, 
and just a touch of impatience, that farmers and 
peasants would be perfectly " loyal " and contented 
with things as they are, if the poHticians, the 
" paid agitators," would only leave them alone. 

Thus, all over the world, does Mrs. Partington 
176 



176 THE FINE FLOWER 

flourish a mop in the face of the Atlantic. It is 
impossible to make these people understand that 
agitators are created by world movements, and that 
the desire for higher wages, better houses, and easier 
conditions of labour is the natural and righteous 
aspiration of industrious men, whose wages are 
poor, whose houses are sunless and ugly, whose 
conditions of labour are dangerous and unhealthy. 

We must not be cross or impatient with these 
nice people. When a man Hke Mr. Austen Chamber- 
lain, who resides, one may say, on the very river-side 
of tendency, solemnly assures the House of Commons 
in a speech seriously praised by the London news- 
papers, that the recent strike of colliers — concurrent 
with similar strikes in America and Germany — was 
due to the rhetoric of Mr. Lloyd George, we must 
surely agree that there are certain minds incapable 
of perception, denied the gift of vision, and pre- 
vented by some extraordinary mental aberration 
from forming rational judgments. Certainly we 
must not expect in country-houses and villages, 
remote from a lemon, to discover over elegant tea- 
cups complete sympathy with modern thought. 

Just as in England inteUigent and honest people 
hate the Labour Member of Parliament, resist the 
movement for a Hving wage, and distrust the 
working-classes on whom they depend for their 
existence, so in Ireland the Protestant English 
garrison detest the NationaUst poHtician, oppose 



THE FINE FLOWER 177 

the movement for self-government, and distrust 
the Catholic democracy whose toil and goodwill are 
essential to their welfare. This distrust is almost 
incurable. It is the spirit of a frontier town con- 
tinually in fear of invasion. We can do nothing 
but hope that a more tolerant and enlightened 
posterity will learn from experience that a democracy 
determined to improve its conditions need be no 
more inimical to virtue and culture, need be no 
more godless and bloody-minded, than a fortunate 
aristocracy determined to preserve its privileges. 

In England there are people who think that the 
best way to resist the democratic movement is to 
encourage what they call " patriotism." One is 
continually meeting in the country some earnest 
soul who beheves that by the singing of " God save 
the King " as often as possible, by teaching children 
to salute the Flag, and by organizing parades 
and pageants on the occasion of national anni- 
versaries — ^never mind how many slums there may 
be, how much sweating, how much inequality and 
discontent — they will effectually slay the dragon 
of Socialism, One finds the same fatuity in Ireland. 
People make one almost hate the tune of the 
national anthem by the inappropriate occasions 
on which they rise to sing that rather un-Christian 
prayer, almost make one loathe the Flag by the 
affectionate cloying terms in which they speak of 
it, and almost make one wish that England had 



178 THE FINE FLOWER 

never won a battle or founded an empire, by the 
boastfulness and triumphant Csesarism with which 
they drag these attainments into contemporary 
politics. They not only do nothing to hinder 
Socialism, but they tend to make of Patriotism 
something mean, provincial, second-rate, and 
offensive. 

Now, although the English garrison in the south 
of Ireland are thus minded, one finds, on pressing 
them in poHte conversation with rational argu- 
ments, that they are not in reaHty opposed to the 
idea of self-government. Like their fellows in 
England, who most willingly admit that civiHzation 
has some very dirty corners and some very ragged 
edges, and who are even enthusiastic for social 
reform so long as it does not proceed from the 
opposite side of the House of Commons, the EngHsh 
garrison in the south of Ireland frankly confess, 
when driven to it, that the present system of 
government is expensive, irritating, and unsuccess- 
ful. If the Conservative party proposed a measure 
of Home Rule, and if that measure assured the 
social dominance of the English garrison, those nice 
people would vote for it and work for it without a 
moment's misgiving. What they really dread is 
not the loss of English interference, but the loss of 
their own place and power as social overlords. 

To stand upon a hill and overlook a slumbering 
market-town in the valley below, is to see the Irish 



THE FINE FLOWER 179 

question visibly spread upon the living map of 
Ireland. Just outside the clustering habitations 
of the town rises a huge and solid building, stronger, 
handsomer, more elaborate and impressive than 
any house in the town itself. This building 
represents English rule. It is the Workhouse. 
Wherever you go in Ireland you find in the neigh- 
bourhood of towns these immense, costly, and 
complex structures born of the indiscriminate appli- 
cation to poor Ireland of those laws for dealing 
with poverty which have been so singularly unsuc- 
cessful in rich England. Few things have been more 
disastrous to modern Ireland than her dose of 
England's Poor Laws. The great massive work- 
houses estabhshed all over the country have created 
tramps, beggars, unemployables, and villains of 
a horrid type ; they have embittered the honest 
poor who are taxed to support them ; and they 
have added an enormous charge to the debit side 
of Ireland's ledger. If you would realize how pre- 
posterous a thing it is to apply Enghsh legislation 
to Ireland, to make Ireland do whatever England 
does, to make of England's necessities the measure 
of Ireland's needs, visit one of these mighty 
buildings and ask any man of business in the 
town what effect it has produced on Irish life. 

From the hill-top, looking to the hills on the 
further side of the vaUey, far away from the town, 
the traveller sees large and beautiful houses planted 



180 THE FINE FLOWER 

at spacious distances from each other and sur- 
rounded by fruitful land, by beautiful woods, and 
gardens shining in the sun. These houses repre- 
sent the English garrison. They are occupied by 
the descendants of those obliging Protestants who 
went, for England's glory, to a starved and shattered 
Ireland, and made themselves masters of the land. 
The fertile fields, the rich woods, the convenient 
rivers, and the rent-paying villages scattered over 
their profitable acres, were not purchased by their 
ancestors ; they were taken by force ; some people 
would say they were stolen. The strong walls sur- 
rounding for many miles some of these fine properties 
cost their owners not a penny-piece. Some were 
actually paid for — quietly reflect upon this fact — - 
by the money England subscribed for the relief of 
the great Famine ; others were not paid for at all — 
they were built by forced labour. The houses, the 
gardens, the walls, the land, the splendour and 
beauty of these places, represent England's con- 
quest of Ireland. They stand for that aspect of 
the Irish question which we are now considering, 
the EngUsh garrison. 

When the eye has taken its fiU of these noble 
domains, it returns for a moment to that other 
aspect of EngUsh influence, the great pompous 
workhouse ; then, it studies the centre of the 
picture, the town itself. Great is the comparison. 
Against the central street — ^with its mayor's humble 



THE FINE FLOWER 181 

residence, its town-hall, its hotel, its shops, and 
its market-place — ^huddle and press a thousand 
mean, miserable small houses, packed and con- 
gested together in utmost confusion of smoke and 
squalor. These little cabins are like so many limpet- 
sheUs stuck to a rock, and, as the limpet-shell is 
packed with limpet flesh, so are these human shells 
stuffed with humanity. Three and four generations 
may be found in those dark, ill-ventilated, and sun- 
less tenements. The tiny streets and stifling courts 
are fuU of children. The struggle for existence 
seems to have crowded their houses and their 
occupiers together like a flock of sheep hurdled in 
a damp and trodden corner of a turnip-field. On 
every side there is land — green, sunlit, and fertile 
land — but these cabins are herded and squeezed 
and fenced together as if they were a London 
slum. They represent the Irish nation. 

With the English garrison lording it over the 
pastures, and with the English Workhouse bleeding 
the virility of the nation before their very eyes, 
bleeding it and charging them with the leech's 
fee, the Irish nation, crammed in its rotten cabin, 
is conscious of something wrong and hindering in 
the union with Great Britain. It is conscious of 
being " squeezed." 

Such in landscape is this Irish question. The 
Workhouse stands for the imposition of unsuitable 
and therefore disastrous laws enacted by another 



182 THE FINE FLOWER 

country ; the domains stand for an alien land- 
lordism ; and the strugghng town, toiling for 
existence, and almost powerless to express its wiU, 
stands for the Irish nation. 

It is quite certain that, by a transformation of 
nationahty, many people now loyal and satisfied in 
England would be disloyal and dissatisfied in Ireland. 
And I marvel that so many of the poor and strugghng 
Irish are not infinitely more bitter and fierce in their 
quarrel with the Union. 

As for the Enghsh garrison, one finds among them 
all sorts and conditions of men. I met, for instance, 
a cavalry subaltern who stretched his long legs 
before the fire, assured me with a laugh that the 
whole agitation for Home Rule was merest blather- 
skite, and begged me to come and stay with him 
at the house of a jolly old cock who was training 
his horses, knew aU about the Irish Nationahty, 
and could tell me dozens of good stories. " You 
can hardly get upstairs to bed," he said, laughing, 
"for dogs fighting on the stairs, but it's not a bad 
Httle crib, and the old fellow himseH is a topper. 
He knows Ireland. By gad, he does ! better far than 
the Brothers Redmond." On the other hand, I met 
men Hke Lord Dunraven, landlords who have spent 
large sums pf money in building cottages, improving 
land, introducing new crops — such as tobacco — and 
who are devoted with something Hke enthusiasm to 
the development of Ireland's resources. Such men, 



THE FINE FLOWER 183 

while they stand apart from Irish politics, candidly 
admit the justice of Ireland's claim for self-govern- 
ment. Then one meets people who are in the stage 
of our own squires at the beginning of the last 
century ; they farm a little land themselves, go 
regularly to the Bench and the parish church, take 
a rather kind but condescending interest in the 
lives of the peasants, and regard hunting, shooting, 
and fishing as the main occupations of a Christian's 
Hfe. Again, one encounters little rural communities 
of culture, where the women are devoted to water- 
colours and music, where Mudie's Ubrary and the 
AthencBum are of weekly importance, and where 
visits are paid to cottages, entertainments organized 
in the viUage schoolroom, and garden-parties pro- 
vided for the county in the summer. 

It would, perhaps, be difficult to find a thoroughly 
bad landlord in modern Ireland ; but it is not easy 
to find men and women of the Enghsh garrison who 
perfectly or even partially comprehend the move- 
ment of democracy. And that is the tragedy of 
aU aristocracies. To be suspicious, distrustful, and 
afraid of democracy, to beheve that every move- 
ment of the many towards more sunshine and 
purer air, to consider that their own happiness, their 
own ease, their own refinement and virtue are of 
essential value to the poor — this is the blunder of all 
privileged classes in all countries of the world. 

In Ireland it is almost pitiful to see how these 



184 THE FINE FLOWER 

little groups of nice people in nearly every part 
of the country form themselves into superior oases 
of mortality, stand entirely aloof from the national 
life, and narrow the noblest qualities of the human 
spirit in a proud exclusiveness to which neither 
their parts nor value entitle them. 

It is the belief of many Nationalists that Home 
Rule will draw the whole nation together, and that 
the Enghsh garrison wiU step down from its pedestal 
and bear an honourable part in the daily work of the 
commonwealth . 

Many of these pleasant EngUsh people — ^for so 
one must really call them — ^are admirably gifted 
for the labour of government, some of them are 
capable of exercising a valuable influence on pohtical 
thought. It is certain that they can be of service to 
the State. 

But they must first learn — ^I speak, of course, only 
of the ruck — to trust democracy, to know that 
anything in the nature of snobbishness is now quite 
vulgarly out of fashion, and to reaUze that every 
man in the modern State has duties which cannot 
be devolved and responsibiHties which cannot be 
shirked. They must, above everything else, appre- 
hend the inwardness of those great tidal movements 
of democracy which are now altering the configura- 
tion of history and shaping the destinies of the 
human race. They must rid their minds of petty 
intolerance, trivial bigotry, and irrational preju- 



THE FINE FLOWER 186 

dice ; they must put themselves into line with 
modern science and modern poHtics ; and they 
must open their doors and invite to their firesides all 
those who are working for the future righteousness 
with clean hands and honest hearts. 



CHAPTER XI 
BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

THERE is something about Dublin that wears 
the look and breathes the character of an old 
French town. It might be a quarter of Paris or a 
neighbour of Tours. One thinks that Balzac would 
have well hked to rummage in its unconventional 
dark streets, that Turgeniev might have lived his 
quiet, gentle, expatriated Hfe in one of its formal 
squares, that Daudet, leaning from a high window 
overlooking the river, would have seen the very- 
theatre of his dreams. 

Cork, when you get to know it, has also some- 
thing of the French spirit — a beautiful city, full 
of surprises, and compassed about by a wonderful 
prettiness of landscape. But DubUn is this, with 
the added grandeur, the more sombre tone, of a 
settled antiquity and a sad illustrious history. 
One is conscious in this old city, with its wide streets, 
its churches, its bridges, and its statues, of a once 
splendid renown, a once glowing enthusiasm for 
nationahty, and a once brilliant devotion to the 
excitements of social hfe — all of which have grown 

186 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 187 

prouder and more exclusive with the shabbiness 
of declining prosperity. It is like some venerable 
lady living in a bath-chair at Tunbridge WeUs 
who once tapped Palmerston's arm with a playful 
fan and suggested to pretty Httle Queen Victoria 
a new arrangement of her ribbons. You seem to 
be aware in these grim and ancient streets of the 
rumble of coaches over the cobbles, of the swagger- 
ing, dicing, and mohawking excesses of gilded youth 
along the narrow pavements, and at night of open 
doors showing bright interiors in the now gloomy and 
deserted squares, music and the sound of dancing 
coming with a decorous joy from the long French 
windows on the upper floor. There is scarcely a 
tree in the gardens that does not whisper of an 
amorous past. 

And also one is conscious at night, in the dark 
and empty streets of this tired city, of a roUing of 
drums, a turning of gun-wheels, and the tramp of 
a gaunt army marching with torn banners and 
bandaged brows through weeping and wailing 
multitudes. Great battles have been fought, subHme 
causes have struggled with adversity, incomparable 
transports of delirious joy and overwhelming 
breakers of tribulation and despair have swept like 
a flood through these ancient sombre streets 
crowded with ghosts, where now the poHceman 
walks Hstless and unemployed, where the gaudy 
electric tram scrapes a string music from the over- 



188 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

head wire, and where the clerk and typist going 
home in the twiHght stop to smile at a window full 
of comic picture post-cards. 

But DubHn is still the Mecca of every Irishman 
conscious of social gifts. There is no other city in 
Ireland where Beau Brummell could take the air 
or Sheridan invite a party of wits to dinner. 
DubHn is the unchallenged capital of Ireland's 
poetry and fashion and philosophy. One may call it 
the Salon of the Lady Next Door. 

There are streets as briUiant with luminous shops 
as the Narrows of our own Bond Street. There are 
statues of national heroes at every corner. Huge 
and solemn architecture congregates at a single 
dramatic point with the impressive authority of 
a capital city. Beautiful gardens with winding 
walks and glowing waters receive on a fine morning 
the perambulators of the city. Gentlemen and 
ladies go riding in the park. Merchants arrive 
at their offices in motor-cars and phaetons. Cavalry 
orderhes trot bumping through the central streets 
with blue envelopes carefully held in the fingers 
of their white gauntlets. Protestant clergymen 
in gaiters and CathoHc priests in shovel-hats rub 
shoulders and avert their eyes in the sauntering 
crowd. Professors from the rival Universities meet 
and avoid each other in bookshops. Students 
lounge at college entries. Apostles of great causes 
and secretaries of vital movements, oddly and 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 189 

romantically dressed, haste through the streets 
with transfigured faces and long hair. Exquisite 
girls, their complexions unequalled on this side 
of Paradise, go shopping under the striped awn- 
ings of the fashionable quarter. Thick-clothed, 
heavy-booted workmen, as in every city of the 
world, loll gloomy, torpid, and savage against the 
shiny walls of street corners. Little impudent-faced 
boys run across the roadways with bundles of news- 
papers under their arms, a placard blowing about 
their bare legs, the end of a cigarette smouldering 
at the dirty corners of their elderly mouths. Women, 
with babies roUed sausage-like in melancholy grey 
shawls, seU gorgeous flowers to chaffering middle- 
class ladies. In the gutters crawl ruminating 
red-nosed sandwich-men announcing incongruous 
music, theatricals, bazaars, bargain sales. The 
butcher's pony rattles by at a sharp trot. The 
jarvey lifts his whip to attract your attention. His 
Excellency's limousine glides up to the pavement's 
edge. . . . 

You get the impression from these interesting 
streets, particularly on a bright morning in spring, 
or a very cold, rosy morning in winter, that the 
city has little to do but enjoy itself. You are 
disposed to guess at the golf-handicap of the men 
rather than to surmise their profession, and as for 
the beautiful women you wonder what romance 
nestles at their heart even when the red, green, and 



190 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

chocolate-coloured pile of tradesmen's books in their 
hands argue a considered and prosaic housekeeping. 

The city is just of a size. Men can be really 
famous in Dublin, importance can feel itself im- 
portant, beauty can know itself known by name, 
even a knighthood is aware of inspiring awe. As 
for BulHon, it may go about the world of DubHn, 
conscious of a most satisfying envy, for people there 
are not distressingly pecunious. If any man is 
truly witty, everyone knows him ; if any man is 
a mighty scholar, everybody tells you so ; if any 
lady gives dehghtful parties, she is a Queen with 
Dubhn for her court. Why anybody who is any- 
body in Dublin should wish to drown himself in the 
Atlantic Ocean of London is a matter that would 
be painful to explore. 

It is worth noticing that with all its gaiety and 
disposition to be fashionable, Dublin is almost 
entirely free of the common vice which disfigures 
other cities. There is nothing in the whole town 
that suggests for a moment anything approaching 
to the central and unblushing shame of London. 
Indeed, a man might live aU his life in DubHn and 
never see a single tragedy of this kind. Girls faU, 
perhaps wilUngly take to that way of getting money, 
but they do not remain in Dublin. Dubhn does 
not pay. A father devoted to his children might take 
them at all hours about the streets of DubHn and 
never have to He away an awkward question. 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 191 

But Dublin has its shame. There are slums, 
hidden away in the dark places of this city, which 
are so atrocious that I think they must long ago 
have destroyed aU virtue in their inhabitants but 
for the constant vigilance of a ruHng priesthood. In 
these foul, inhuman dens — one dreadful closet for 
a double row of houses — ^you come across little 
interiors decorated with pictures of St. Mary, and 
discover so kindly and virtuous a family Ufe that 
you are disposed to beheve the dictum of Dean 
Inge, "It is the pig that makes the sty, and not 
the sty that makes the pig." But the poverty is 
frightful. The struggle to keep head above water 
is very nearly intolerable. People do go to the 
devil, because for them all sense of heavenly reaHty 
is obHterated in these noisome alleys of earthly 
wretchedness. I cannot conceive of any man with 
one smouldering gHmmer of an expiring conscience 
taking rent for these burrows. To be pickpocket 
or murderer would be more downright honest. 

Yet in these slums of Dublin there is an atmo- 
sphere which clothes them with some different 
guise from the slums of Belfast. To begin with, 
they have the excuse of age. They do not say to 
the visitor, " Here we are ; the handiwork of 
Industriahsm ; the expression of Capital's attitude 
to Labour ; the last word in red brick and slates." 
They existed before factories darkened the skies. 
They seem older than the city that surrounds 



192 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

them with dwarfing magnificence. They speak of 
a simpler age, a more primitive people, and of fields 
that were once green to their very doors. In a 
certain way they are picturesque. At any rate 
they are only anachronisms, not contemporary 
iniquities. 

I paid a visit to these slums with a notable saint. 
Had he lived in the Middle Ages this good man 
would have been " all heart," as we say ; living 
in the twentieth century he is nearly " aU head." 
Let me present the reader to this excellent good 
man — the Reverend Father Aloysius, a Franciscan, 
a temperance reformer, and a student of municipal 
reform. 

He is a taU, bony, angular, small-headed gentle- 
man, of an age between thirty and forty. He wears 
spectacles which keep sUpping to the end of his 
nose. As he talks, the thin long beard projecting 
from his chin wags like a flag-signal. His large 
mouth is seldom closed — through the wide and 
genial gateway of his lips you see an incredible 
number of teeth all jumbled together but Uving 
apparently in the greatest amity. His eyes are 
round, vivacious, feverish. His brown hair is 
brushed forward over his forehead. The face is 
that colour of heat which hints of a digestion addled 
by too ceaseless an activity of the brain. 

Father Aloysius, in his thick brown-girdled 
habit, his little skull-cap at the back of his head, 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 193 

and his long feet sliding about in loose sandals, 
seems always to be in a hurry — as if he had just 
jumped up from a table strewn with facts and 
statistics and was afraid of being late for an appoint- 
ment at the other end of the world. He walks on 
his toes, with a Httle hop in his steps ; he carries 
books and papers under his arms, and talks at a 
pace which stretches the drum of one's ears to 
keep up with it. As he hurries you along he will 
wheel suddenly round to show something important 
in the street just past ; or, pushing his spectacles 
into place and catching you by the sleeve, he will 
plunge across the traffic of the roadway, and stop 
dead on the other side, craning his thin neck and 
looking to right and left for a particular house that 
he thinks is worthy of your inspection. 

And you feel that four hundred years ago this 
electric person would have spent the whole day 
kneeling in his hermit's cell or poring over a sacred 
book of mysticism. The times change and the 
saints with them. Love of God has become devotion 
to humanity. 

One trivial thing in my walk with this good man 
made a considerable impression on my mind. Every 
man we passed doffed his hat to the monk, and 
children came charging towards him with the cry, 
as they colHded with his legs and raised their smiHng 
dirty faces to his eyes, " God bless you. Father." 
Labourers mending the road, carters driving vans 



194 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

and waggons, postmen going by with empty bags 
limp across their shoulders, jarveys driving their 
cars along, working-men lounging at street corners, 
gentlemen of the commercial traveller persuasion, 
and dangerous-looking roughs at the beginning of 
a slum manhood — all these men, certainly hundreds 
of them, and so far as I saw with no single exception, 
looked respectfully towards the monk, and lifted 
hats and caps. 

Father Aloysius seemed to see none of these 
salutations. He acknowledged only those that 
came as it were face to face with him, and that with 
briefest inclination of his head. But again and 
again he slackened his pace, bent down laughing 
and delighted, and touched with his hand the head 
of some child calling upward from his knees, " God 
bless you. Father ; God bless you. Father." " God 
bless you, child," he would say, gently and sweetly, 
and then guide them affectionately out of his 
way. 

Perhaps it is fear on the part of ignorant people. 
Perhaps it is admiration for a life of seK-sacrifice. 
But whatever the cause of this respect, I was struck 
by its universal accord in a neighbourhood so terrible 
and soul-destroying that I should not have been 
in the least surprised to hear scoffing and mocking 
words aimed at the servant of God. Think of 
such reverence for a monk, or anybody else, in a 
slum of Liverpool, Manchester, or Portsmouth. 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 195 

" Everybody seems to know you," I said. 
" Our Order has worked here for a long time," he 
repHed. " They are genuinely fond of us, and they 
respect the habit. You would be reaUy interested, 
I think, to discover how these poor people cHng to 
religion, and how kind they are to each other. 
That is what gives us such great pleasure. Their 
kindness to each other, particularly in distress, is 
amazing. It is quite, quite beautiful." 

He turned to me, smiHng, the eyes shining, 
" On the whole are they fairly virtuous ? " 
" Their one vice is drink. People say they are 
lazy, but I am sure it is untrue. They grow in- 
dolent because looking for a job or standing about 
for work disheartens them. They are not properly 
nourished, and their houses are insanitary ; one can- 
not expect them to be efficient. If they had regular 
work they would be brisker. But all the same, 
drink is a real vice. We are making a great fight 
for tempera'nce with our Father MattHew Guild, 
and the difference is already extraordinary. You 
will see our Father Matthew HaU where we get 
crowds of working-men every night. You see, they 
have been neglected. Little has been done to 
amuse and strengthen them in their leisure. And 
drink in Ireland has always been regarded rather 
indulgently. I don't think the poor of DubHn are 
worse drinkers than the poor of London or Glasgow. 
But there is too much drinking. It is our worst 



196 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

enemy. In everything else the people are wonder- 
fully good, and as soon as a man gives up drink 
he becomes happy." 

" You think the slums are responsible ? " 

" We find that very soon after a man signs the 
pledge, he grows prosperous, and leaves the neigh- 
bourhood. He can afford a better house. And as the 
good people go out, the bad people flow in, so that we 
have always got a population of miserables. If the 
slums were swept away and decent houses erected, 
the character of the people would improve, our 
work would be infinitely more easy. These slums 
are the sink of the city to which aU the unhappiness 
and failure and poverty and drunkenness gravitate 
in a steady flow. People can live here on next to 
nothing." 

We entered some of the dens in the worst 
slums, and in every case the Father's visit was 
evidently regarded as a supreme honour. With the 
deference paid to him, there was also admiration 
and affection. I detected nothing of that morose- 
ness which so often characterizes the spirit of poor 
people in London slums. These depressed Irish 
have a certain grace — a charm of manner and a 
tone of voice — which poverty seems to spare. 

Father Aloysius carried me off to see the Father 
Matthew Memorial Hall — a vast building excel- 
lently planned for the entertainment and instruction 
of working-men. He showed me these premises 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 197 

with the pride and enthusiasm of a collector ex- 
hibiting his spoils. His conversation showed him 
to be weU acquainted with many movements of 
social reform in England ; I discovered that he 
is something of an expert in pubHc questions ; he 
is a convinced and keen-spirited optimist, beheving 
that it is good to be aHve and fighting for the 
progress of mankind. He would make an excellent 
member of Parliament, invaluable on Committees 
and Commissions; his letter to The Times would 
receive the most respectful treatment. 

As we parted he jerked the bundle of books and 
papers from under his arm, and began to go through 
them with his accustomed speed in everything. 
" I have here," he said, " some printed matter 
which I think may interest you." And I drove 
away with most of his books and nearly all his 
papers in my unworthy hands. 

The phrase " printed matter " is one of the most 
common in DubHn parlance. If you are a senti- 
mental traveller, and go about this city asking 
questions and seeking information, you will find 
that nearly every one you meet has " printed 
matter," which he begs you to take away with you 
and read at your leisure. An extra portmanteau is 
advisable. 

I did not reaUze until this visit to DubHn how 
vast a boon to the printer are those multitudinous 
and conflicting " movements " which characterize 



198 BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 

our period. In Dublin there is any number of 
such movements, their name indeed, like certain 
of their relatives, is legion; and everybody con- 
nected with a movement has an inexhaustible 
supply of " printed matter " deaHng with that par- 
ticular cult. It seems to me that Hke those thrifty 
and inventive people who live by taking in each 
other's washing, the inhabitants of Dublin must 
spend their days in becoming proselytes of each 
other's proselytism. There must be a perpetual 
game of Family Coach among the various stacks of 
" printed matter." Sooner or later, I think, every 
thought in the brain of Ireland wings to DubHn 
and there materiahzes in pamphlet form, becoming 
" printed matter." 

Belfast, as we shall see presently, is differently 
engaged. But this passion for " printed matter " 
is characteristic of the Irish capital. It shows, I 
think, that Dublin is a city of ideas, it shows that 
the Irish nation is awake and alert, it shows that 
interest in the art and science of human existence 
is as pregnant in Ireland as it is in London. Dublin, 
if it is not exactly a seething cauldron, is at least 
a kettle singing pleasantly on the hob. 

I am quite sure that Futurist poets and Futurist 
painters would receive homage in DubHn. I recom- 
mend, indeed, all ladies and gentlemen with cranky 
ideas to make the Irish capital their habitation. 
Provided with money enough to indulge themselves 



BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS DUBLIN 199 

in a little " printed matter," they are sure of interest 
and may confidently reckon on disciples. 

And this it is which makes Dublin so interesting 
and beguiHng a city. You are not depressed by the 
inky shadows of a mechanical commerce, you are 
not bored by a formal sameness in humanity, you 
are not teased by the trifling littleness and the sated 
cynicism of a conventional society. Every other 
man you meet has a patent medicine for the ills of 
the human race, or is working heart and soul for 
millennium, or is looking about him for a fad and 
a crotchet to which he can devote the passion of his 
life. Everybody wants to be enthusiatic about 
something. Men there are in love with existence. 
You feel that a nation is thinking about life. 
You encounter Mr. Pickwick and Don Quixote at 
the same dinner-party, and adventure is the spirit 
of every table talk. One man strikes an idea to 
light his pipe, and sets fire to the box of Dublin 
dreams. I met two professors in one evening : the 
Professor of English Literature was enthusiastic 
about political economy; and the Professor of 
Commerce was enthusiastic about poetry. 

I long for Home Rule, that I may go to Dublin 
before I die and see the city shining in the glory 
of a national ParHament. It will be a living capital. 

Much virtue, believe me, in " printed matter." 



CHAPTER XII 
THE DAME 

SOMEWHERE in the wilds of County Deny— 
I think it must have been in the neighbour- 
hood of Magherafelt — I made acquaintance with a 
mild and beautiful old woman who was very amus- 
ing and interesting, and who seemed to me in one 
particular typical of the Irish Mother. 

She lives alone in a diminutive dwelUng, like a 
little whitewashed fowl-house, at the gates of a 
great house occupied by a doctor. To enter the old 
lady's cabin you descend two steps, stooping your 
head to avoid a blow from the lintel. The interior 
is bright and cosy. A tall bed, spread with an 
elaborate quilt of patchwork, is the principal article 
of furniture. The walls on every side are pasted with 
most incongruous pictures and advertisements 
cut from magazines and newspapers — advertise- 
ments, among others, of corsets, gartered stockings, 
and high-heeled shoes. There are three little deep- 
set windows, with flower-pots on the ledges. A 
door in the back admits to a garden. A peat-fire 

200 



THE DAME 201 

bums in the grate. On the mantelpiece are china 
ornaments and brass candlesticks. 

The dame is white-haired, and wears a black cap 
with a frill of white musHn in the front. Her face in 
repose has the austerity of a church dignitary. The 
eyes are pale blue and severe. The colour of the 
skin is Hke ivory. Her cheeks are hollow. Nose and 
lips are pinched and refined. 

She said to me, in a low voice, speaking quickly 
and impressively : " I am alone in the world, after 
a long and heavy life ; but it's the Will of God ; and 
who am I to complain ? Tut, who am I ? But, ah, 
the weary time, the weary time ! I bore seven sons 
to my husband, and I reared five of them, tall men 
and strong, and they all left me and went away, tut, 
tut ; and now they're dead — dead and buried in 
foreign lands. Not one of them lies in an Irish grave. 
Two of my boys are buried in America, one in 
AustraUa, one in a place they call Glasgow over 
in Scotland, and one of them in Canada. Ah me, 
ah me ! Three of them were married, and their 
children, I suppose, are aUve now ; but I've never 
seen them, I never hear a word from them ; I don't 
even know their names. But it's the Will of God ; 
and people here are very kind to me ; the good 
doctor comes to see me, a rare gentleman he is, and 
he sends me milk from his cows ; and I've got the 
Old Age Pension ; and when I die I shall be buried 
beside my husband, who was always a good man to 



202 THE DAME 

me, and a true father to his sons. Dear, dear! 
But how I'm cracking to you ! " Her face lit sud- 
denly with a smile. " You'll think me bold to be 
talking so freely." 

Something of the romance of our race seemed to 
shine over the old dame as she was speaking. 
Withered and pale, solitary and pensioned, this 
venerable cottager, sitting beside her peat-fire in a 
derelict corner of Ulster, has given of the fruit of 
her womb to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
Seed of her seed are now planting and reaping in 
lands across the sea, and she does not know how 
they fare, does not even know their names. Over 
her fire alone in the world, but not friendless, she 
dreams of the past ; and none of her children's 
children will come to close her eyes and follow her 
to the grave. Something of her temperament, 
something of her heart, something of her soul may 
be interwoven in the destinies of America, Canada, 
and AustraHa — ^perhaps indestructibly. 

She said to me : " It's wonderful how many people 
live as if they'd got nothing to do but look for their 
own pleasure. To think of that ! I'm always telling 
people here that our real Hfe is to come, that we 
ought to seek God and think about Him — for isn't 
it true that after death we shall live for ever and 
ever ? Tut, of course it's true. I think it is dreadful, 
oh dreadful, that people don't think more about 
God. And what a glorious thought it is. A Father 



THE DAME 203 

in heaven ! God is Love ! Our Father ! Could a 
body have anything more beautiful to think about ? 
But, you know, there are some people who never 
say their prayers ! Tut. Imagine it ! Never say 
their prayers ! Now, isn't that a dreadful thing ? 
Oh, I can't think what's coming to the world. But, 
there, there ! You'U be laughing at me soon. I 
haven't had a crack hke this for a long time. Oh 
dear, aren't I talking a lot ! " 

I encouraged her to continue. 

" I've seen something of the world, and I've 
crossed the sea," she said presently. " I once paid 
a visit to that place they caU Glasgow, over in Scot- 
land across the water — oh, a terrible, terrible place ! 
Tut, I don't know how people can Uve in such dirty 
places, not fit for the animals, I'm sure. I went 
there to see my poor boy ; he was an engineer ; and 
there he lies, dead in the cemetery. Ah, he was a 
beautiful boy ! TaU, oh, yes ! and strong and 
fine-looking — a great man every way. Oh, you 
should have seen his father — a grand man ! But 
he's dead ; yes, he's dead. And now I'll tell you 
something interesting. When I went across the sea 
I heaved. For the first time in my life. Never 
before and never since I did it, but I heaved then. 
Up it came ! Oh, dreadful ! WMsh ! — ^you never 
saw such a thing in your fife. And when I got to 
Glasgow there was only a narrow board from the 
ship to the land ; and do you think I was afraid 



204 THE BAME 

to walk down it ? Tut, why, I ran ! Yes, my son 
said he never saw such a thing in his life. Everybody 
thought I should fall and wanted to hold me ; and 
I ran ! But the truth is I was so glad to be rid of 
the ship. Yes, I ran down the plank. Oh, I've seen 
something of the world." 

Always she returned to the subject of re- 
ligion. 

" Don't you think it is awful, the way people set 
themselves up against God ? They make them- 
selves to know more than the God Who made them. 
Just think of that, now. I heard a story in my 
young days which shows how God punishes people 
like that. There was a poor man in Ireland who 
married, and every year his wife bore him a child. 
When there were five of them, he said to her, ' I 
cannot a£ford to live with you ; your children wiU 
soon eat up all I've got.' And he went away, and 
left her, so that he should have no more children. 
Yes, he went over to Scotland, where the wages are 
high, and every week he sent money to his wife in 
Ireland, just enough for herself and the five bairnies. 
And at the end of three years he came back ; and 
what do you think happened ? The very next time 
she was brought to bed, she had three at a birth — 
triplets ! Yes, one for every year he had deserted 
her. So he might just as well have stayed at home. 
And that's how God punishes people who set up 
their dirty ignorance against His laws. Sure, doesn't 



THE DAME 206 

He know what is good for us better than we know 
it ourselves ? " 

Towards the end of our colloquy she grew more 
whispering and confidential. A look of cunning stole 
into her pale blue eyes. I noticed that she studied 
my appearance and the details of my clothing with 
a hungry curiosity, almost a murderous greed. 

She leaned quite close to me, put her hand on my 
knee, and in a very low voice, moistening her Hps 
with excitement, and speaking as if she was impart- 
ing a tremendous secret for my everlasting benefit, 
she whispered : 

" Now, I'll tell you what you should do. You 
listen to me now. Hush ! I'll tell you something ; 
yes, something good. You must think about God. 
You must always be looking for Him, and listening 
to what He says. Sure, He's always near, always 
quite close to us. Always teUing us what to do. For 
instance " — drawing her chair even nearer, sinking 
her voice even lower, and speaking with extra- 
ordinary rapidity as her hand passed excitedly up 
and down over my knee — " for instance, suppose you 
should come across a poor old woman, Hving aU 
alone, and with only just enough money to keep 
body and soul together ; and suppose, being a fine 
rich gentleman, you feel incHned to put your hand 
in your pocket, and you think to yourself that you'll 
give the old body a shilling, or say half a crown — 
well, do you think it's your own thought at all ? 



206 THE DAME 

Faith, it's not so — ^not at all ! Tut, it isn't you 
that's thinking you'll give the money. But, my 
dear, you do it ! You do it ! Hush ! Take my 
advice now. Do it, do it ! And I'll tell you why. 
Ifs God telling you. It's not you thinking ; it's God. 
Yes, that's how God acts. He teUs us to do these 
things. You give the poor old woman half a crown, 
or if that's too much, give her a shilHng ; and in 
the next world you'll get it back — God Himself 
wiU give it back to you. Isn't that wonderful, now ? 
— ^but isn't it beautiful ? — and, mind you — ^hush ! — 
ifs true. I know it. That's how God acts. Now, 
my dear, be sure you always do what God tells you." 

This beautiful old woman, a Mother in Ireland, 
had dropped suddenly into cunning senility. She 
addressed me as a Httle child and spoke herself as a 
child. It was like an animal to watch the licking 
of her thin lips, the covetous peering of her eyes, 
the twitchings of her hands. 

I thanked her with becoming gratitude for her 
revelation, and before taking my leave begged her 
to accept a terrestrial half-crown, given, however, 
with no thought of a celestial crown. 

She threw up her hands, her eyes lit with laughter, 
her lips broke into smiles, her pale face became 
suffused with the warm colour of delight, and she 
exclaimed, taking the money : 

" But I had no thought you'd be thinking of me ! 
There ! but I hope you don't think I've been asking 



THE DAME 207 

for it ? Tut. The thought never entered my mind ! 
You'll beheve me, won't you, now ? Sure, you 
must believe me. The thought never entered my 
mind." 

And, cancelling all merit from my charity, perhaps 
imperilling my soul, I said that I perfectly believed 
her. 

She followed me to the door, a most sweet and 
beautiful figure, praying God to prosper me and 
give me joy all the days of my life. Her benediction 
chased pity from my heart. After all, it was only 
a reflex action of her brain, a return to the hard and 
bitter struggle for existence. I dare to say that 
she was hardly conscious of guile. 

A bHthe and jovial but a very Turveydrop of a 
guard on one of the smallest Ulster railways said to 
me, "If your honour had the time, I could tell you 
things, och, many things, that would be worth half 
a crown to go in a book or a newspaper." 

I was unable to discover how he guessed that I 
had any connection with books or newspapers, and 
had to content myself with ruminations on the 
evident ubiquity of EngHsh half-crowns in Ulster. 

At a Httle station, just before the junction where 
one changes for the main Hne, this smihng guard 
came to my window, lifted his cap, and inquired 
deferentially, " Will your honour allow me just to 
take a nip ? " I began to fumble in my trouser 
pocket — ^for he had been singularly obliging ; but 



208 THE DAME 

he stopped me with a jovial laugh. " Oh, no, your 
honour," he implored, producing a ticket-punch, 
" not a nip out of the bottle, but only a nip out of 
your honour's ticket ! Now, is that worth half a 
crown ? Oh, no ! not at all." And giving me back 
my ticket and raising his cap again, he departed 
wreathed in smiles. 
At the junction I saved one shilling and sixpence. 




Plioto. Mason, Dublin. 



A FISHING VILLAGE 




Photo. Mason, Dublin. 



KERRY DANCING 



CHAPTER Xm 
A CORNER OF ULSTER 

PORT-NA-BLAH, meaning Buttermilk Harbour, 
is the name given to a few scattered cottages 
clinging to the rocks about Sheep Haven. 

These two names, so gentle and pastoral, better 
suggest the occupation of humanity in those parts 
than the actual earth and actual ocean to which 
mankind has attached them. For while man folds 
his sheep on the mountain side and drives his cows 
from wind-swept bogland to the shelter of the home- 
stead, the terrific force of the Atlantic thunders 
against a bleak coast of incomparable grandeur, 
sending the tide of its power flowing far inland over 
strewn and shattered rocks which are like the ruins 
of a great city. In winter a more desolate, a more 
terrible, a more ferocious coast than these broken 
sea-walls of Donegal can hardly be found in the 
sister islands, and the great sea, contemptuous of 
its name, far from wearing a sheepish look or chant- 
ing an Arcadian song, comes leaping to the heaped 
chaos of the shore with a howl that seems to set 
the firmament in fear, 

o 209 



210 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

The savage nature of the landscape and the hate- 
ful menace of the sea bestow extraordinary charm 
upon the httle cottages. They are so child-Hke and 
helpless, so meek and lowly, so trustful and com- 
placent, that, contemplating their Httle white- 
washed walls and trivial roofs from such a distance 
as the height of Horn Head, one seems to see in them 
an expression of man's truest attitude to the universe 
which enfolds him. The wind roars against the 
shattered cHffs, the waves hurl themselves upon 
the streaming rocks, the wild tumultuous air is 
filled with a clangour full of sovran scorn or furious 
malevolence, and in the Httle ramshackle byre built 
of planks and gorse a girl is milking a cow, at the 
peat fire in the kitchen of the farm-house a woman 
is baking bread, and down from the mountain side, 
carr3ang a ]..mb in his arms, comes a man whose 
face is kind and tender. 

I cannot decide whether it is more difficult to 
express in words the grandeur of this tremendous 
landscape or the gentleness, the sweetness, and the 
pleasant grace of the simple people who Hve in its 
midst. Perhaps a remark made to me by an old 
woman may better help the reader to feel the 
nature of the scenery than a catalogue of its quali- 
ties. 

One morning, after a night of snow, I started to 
walk from the farm-house where I was lodging in 
Port-na-blah to the distant and lofty scar of Horn 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 211 

Head. It was one of those clear and ringing days 
when the sun burns hke scarlet blood, the snow 
throbs and vibrates with metaUic Ught, and the 
wind against the face has the cutting sharpness of 
a razor's edge. Seaward, where the air was filled 
with powdered mist, the moving ocean gHttered 
like an agate ; inland, where the lochs lay at the 
feet of the hiUs, there was a duU grey shimmer, as 
of hammered steel. For the rest it was an utterly, 
a dazzUngly white world — the only true white 
known to man, a white which makes white linen and 
white paper look dingy and ashamed. 

The lonely roads were smooth with this thick 
whiteness from hedge to hedge ; the fields blinded 
the eyes with the same unbroken flash of white, 
roUing, heaving, and sinking into immeasurable dis- 
tance ; the great mountains, sprinkled and patched 
with white on their rock-strewn sides, Hfted summits 
to the troubled sky which were as smooth and thick 
with snow as the level field beside the loch. The 
cry of sea-birds wheeHng through the cold air had 
the wail of starvation. Rooks, with puffed feathers 
and dishevelled heads, loaded the leafless trees with 
a sense of mourning and death. No cattle were 
visible throughout that frozen world. No human 
creature was working in the fields. And the wind 
pierced and cut, so that even Httle birds were 
forced to run like mice through the hedges. 

I passed through the empty streets of Dun- 



212 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

fanaghy, a small town with I know not how many 
rival churches, and getting on to the fields made a 
short cut of the long laborious ascent to Horn 
Head. These fields, pricked with the feet of birds 
and spurred by the feet of rabbits, brought me once 
more to the road, and soon I was in the very teeth 
of the wind, marching with bent head up a steep 
invisible track with cottages here and there on one 
side and a hne of moaning telegraph wires on the 
other. 

At the extreme end of this long straight road was 
a cottage, and when I first saw it a woman — ^barely 
distinguishable as a woman — was moving from the 
door to some sheds at the side. As she came back, 
walking slowly and carrying a bucket in her hand, 
she caught sight of me in the distance, and stopped, 
shading her eyes and watching my approach. After 
some moments, she lowered her hand and shuffled 
into the house. Again she appeared, and standing 
by the door again shaded her eyes and looked in my 
direction. Thus she remained, as I climbed the 
stifE hill and came well withia sight of her. 

She was apparently very old. The face was for- 
bidding, almost repulsive. She wore a dull red 
handkerchief tied over her head ; the thick grey 
skirt reached only to the tops of her boots, which 
were like a man's ; a black shawl was crossed over 
her breast. 

I felt I should like to speak to this lonely old 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 213 

woman, and went to the gate of the cottage and 
inquired the best way to Horn Head. She came to- 
wards me, after a moment's inspection, slowly and 
surlily, shuffling rather than walking. The dark 
eyes were like dots in the big yellowish face ; the 
skin was infinitely wrinkled and pitted ; the upper 
lip was long, severe, implacable. One thought that 
such a woman had never laughed, had never thanked 
God for the gift of Ufe. 

In a gruff man's voice she told me where I must 
leave the road and make across the fields to the 
Head. Then, looking me up and down, she asked 
sulkily and enviously, " You come from far, from 
over the water ; there's plenty of money from where 
you come ? " My answer did not satisfy her. "Ah ! " 
she exclaimed in the rich Scot's accent common to 
the Irish of the North, " it's Gne to travel and see 
the world, and have plenty of money." 

" It's better, perhaps," I answered, " to bide here 
patiently, working out one's duty, and waiting 
quietly for what's to come." 

She shook her head. " I'm told it's grand in other 
countries," she answered ; " grand, grand, they say. 
Plenty of money over there." 

I laughed. " Why do you talk of money ? " I 
asked mockingly. " Isn't aU this " — ^pointing to the 
landscape and the sea beyond — " a great deal better 
than money ? Just look at it aU. What a picture 
for human eyes ! " 



214 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

She regarded me with a penetrating interest. 
Then, slowly nodding her old head, and roUing her 
"r's" with a wonderful emphasis, slowly she 
uttered these words, " 'Tis the hardships of the 
world up here, and cold." 

So we parted, and her words haunted me on my 
way. I got to Horn Head, and, as well as the wind 
would let me, stood breathless and buffeted and 
almost stifled gazing at the vastness of ocean and 
the sombre line of tragic coast on either hand. 
Tory Island was visible far away on my left, looking 
like a naughty boy who has paddled dangerously out 
to sea, while the three smaller islands between it and 
the shore seemed Hke less daring brothers Unking 
hands and calling him back to safety. On my right 
was a tortured and broken coast, with ocean flowing 
far inland behind me, and the confusion of writhing 
hills about Port-na-blah blazing white and ghttering 
against the sky. 

The words of the old woman came to me with a 
touch of Lear in their grief. I looked about me and 
felt that for those who had to wring existence out 
of these rocks, and who had to face the long winter 
on these mountains, her judgment was a true one, 
and just. Nature herself seemed to say, " 'Tis the 
hardships of the world up here, and cold." Desola- 
tion stretched away on every hand, interminable, 
wasteful, heartless and indifferent. Nowhere was 
visible the kindness of God's hand ; nowhere the 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 216 

lingering impress of caressing power. This veritable 
upheaval of a world, disfigured and racked and riven 
by persecuting storm, looked Uke materials of crea- 
tion on which had fallen once and for ever the 
shadow of God's back as He turned His face inland 
to the shaping of the valley. 

And as I stood there, first hail, and then snow, 
blown by winds that shrieked in my ear, fiUed 
the whole sky with storm and blotted out the 
hiUs. 

The hardships of the world, and cold ! Yes, 
true enough. But surely there is poetry in that 
grumble, surely the very words proclaim a spiritual 
influence from the haggard earth that inspired them. 
Lear himself might have cried out. The hardships 
of the world, and cold ! What Cockney would so 
express his complaint against creation ? . . . 

I turned my back on the snow, and repeating 
the words in my mind, came to the thought that 
even a desolate existence on a wind-swept mountain 
disdained of God and abandoned by civiHzation 
confers something of grandeur on the soul which 
the urbanity of cities fails to give. 

And when I got back to my peat fire and my 
dinner, and the lamp was lit and the shutters 
closed, and Maggie stood talking beside my table in 
her adorable Scots music — ^vowing and protesting 
she is L*ish to the last drop of blood in her body and 
no taint of Scotland in her nature at aU, at all — ^I 



216 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

felt that the hardships of the world and cold have 
their great rewards in domestic contrasts. 

Maggie is the eldest daughter of the house. Her 
father is dead, her mother is now too old for in- 
cessant work, her brothers labour the fields and 
tend the cattle. It is Maggie's duty to care for the 
lodgers, cooking their snipe to a turn, grilUng their 
mutton chops which are hke porterhouse steaks, 
baking bread and cakes for them, and seeing that 
the fire in the parlour is always bright and roasting, 
the lamp always well trimmed and unoozing, the 
beds always smooth and warm. 

To speak socially she is Miss MuUen, but when I so 
addressed her, she blushed a timid scarlet, smiled 
as though I had been derisive, hung her head for a 
moment, and pleaded to be called Maggie. " You 
are Miss MuUen ? " I had inquired. " I'm Maggie," 
was her answer. 

She does everything well. There is not one London 
cook in seventy who can equal her performance ; 
she bakes such bread as might entice the gods from 
ambrosia, and from the way in which your bed is 
made to the manner in which your lamp is trimmed 
you recognize in everything of Maggie's doing the 
genius of a careful soul. But with all this efficiency, 
Maggie is hundreds of years behind humanity. She 
beheves in the wee folk, there are lochs she would 
not care to pass at night, she cannot understand 
infidelity concerning ghosts, and she is sure the 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 217 

saints have only to be asked properly to do for us 
whatsoever we desire. 

I forget her age, but I am sure it is the youthful 
side of thirty. She is of medium height, with dark 
hair, a pale skin, and long-lashed eyes in which 
violets and hyacinths have mingled their colour to a 
most harmonious blue. The corners of her mouth are 
unsteady with smiles, and when these smiles get quite 
out of control the Hps part and the teeth shine with 
the eyes in cheerful laughter. But she never laughs 
as you hear a factory girl laugh in the street — ^her 
laughter is soft, low, and beautiful Hke her voice. 
The upper Hp is dusky with an almost invisible 
down. 

It was dehghtful to listen to her thoughts as she 
stood at the door, a dish or tray in her hand, haK 
going from the room and half incHned to stay, the 
head hanging, the eyes bright with amazement at 
her own audacity in discussion. Seldom did she 
raise those eyes to look at me direct, mostly they 
regarded the dish in her hand, or looked towards 
the shutters, or explored the carpet. And of course 
the body was never stiU, but swayed with her words. 

She beHeves in God as perhaps no httle child does 
ever quite beheve. But her faith is childHke — ^it 
is not theological. She is more sure of God than of 
her own thoughts about Him, she speaks of heaven 
as if she had spent her childhood looking through 
its gates, she prays for her Dead as if they were 



218 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

kinsmen across the sea. One word expresses her 
reHgion : it is Love. Never does cross or angry 
word escape her lips, never does indignation harden 
the timid beauty of her eyes, never does she express 
herself with the emphasis and challenge of self. 
Always she is tolerant, kindly, self-depreciating, 
anxious to be of service to others. I never heard 
her say one strident word or saw her do a single 
thing noisily, awkwardly, ungraciously. She seemed 
to breathe the blessing of a gentle kindness on the 
burdens of her daily life. 

The sternest words she said to me concerned a 
landlord who was shot in that part of Ireland some 
years ago. " He was very cruel," said Maggie, in 
her solemn voice, " and he ill-treated the poor 
people very sorely, so that many were starved and 
homeless ; but they would have borne all if he had 
not done worse things than that." 

I pressed her to tell me those worse things. After 
some hesitation, she raised her eyes frankly to mine, 
regarded me with a solemn look, and said : " He 
would give some of the tenants nice cottages inside 
the domain, and then take their daughters into his 
house and bring them to shame." 

" And they thought that a worse thing than being 
starved ? " I asked, to get her mind. 

" Oh, but surely ! " she exclaimed. " Oh, but 
yes, of course ! " She regarded me with something 
like reproach in her eyes. "They killed him for 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 219 

that. It was wrong to take his hfe, wrong to do 
violence ; but they could not bear that he should 
do that. He was a bad man, a very wicked man, I 
fear, and it was no life at all while he was aHve." 

Maggie's views of hfe are extremely simple. She 
is untouched by the rather muddied movements of 
great cities. She would be regarded as a savage by 
advanced women in London. But I do not think 
you wiU find a sweeter or a gentler creature under 
heaven, and if sweetness and gentleness are ad- 
mirable quahties of human spirit, London should 
go to Port-na-blah, not Port-na-blah to London. 

This farm-house, which has lately added to itself 
wings for summer lodgers, is in many ways repre- 
sentative of Irish home-hfe. It is set, as I have 
said, in a wild country. The potatoes, boiled in 
their brown jackets, have had their leaves blown by 
westerly gales, their flowers drenched by Atlantic 
spray ; the milk has come to the pail from cows 
that get a hving from httle fields rescued by years 
of toil from bog and moor ; the sheep can be seen 
silhouetted against grey skies on the top of rocks 
that would try the stamina of a brave boy ; turnips 
and wheat are grown in land that wellnigh rattles 
with stones ; only the cocks and hens in the shelter 
of the homestead are removed from a frightful 
struggle for existence. But the Hfe of the people is 
more beautiful and gracious than the fife of ItaHan 
peasants. 



220 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

Many a morning, when I woke early and shivered 
in a room whose fireplace was filled with the thick 
brown ashes of last night's fire, I looked from my 
frozen window upon the work of the farm and felt 
cheered and warmed by the spectacle of such courage 
and good -humour. One of Maggie's brothers, 
followed by a couple of barking dogs, flapping his 
arms together and stamping with his thick boots as 
he came slowly along, would be seen driving the 
cows over the crown of the snow-swept hill ; another 
of these brothers would cross the frozen yard wheel- 
ing gingerly a barrow of piled and balanced turnips 
to be sHced in the barn ; Maggie's sister would run 
from the house, her head bent against the wind, and 
fetch corn for the fowls that streamed after her in 
hungry excitement ; and Maggie herself would come 
to the door with something domestic, whose dust 
required to be shaken in the wind, and she would call 
cheerful words to her brothers through the flakes 
of snow, and they would look up with smiles 
and answer her with the breath smoking at their 
lips. 

And when the earth was so iron with frost and so 
buried under snow that work was impossible, these 
brothers would take their seats in the family kitchen, 
light their pipes, stretch their legs, and laugh at the 
weather. Every now and then one of them would 
jump up to Hft a heavy weight for his sister or to 
get something that the mother required from across 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 221 

the room ; and these actions were done with an 
unconscious courtesy that gave them singular charm. 
Dehghtful it was to sit in the warm kitchen and 
listen to the talk of a family so united in love, so 
contented with the toil of simple Ufe, so untroubled 
by our problems. 

Port-na-blah is so many miles from a town and so 
long a drive from even the smallest railway station, 
that charity there is not organized, and humanity 
is not " inspected " and rate-divided into the rigid 
compartments of local government. If a man falls 
out of work, everybody knows it and many will 
come personally to his aid ; if a woman is to give 
birth to a child, the knitting-needles of the neigh- 
bours are busy long beforehand and someone is 
there to do all she can for mother and child in the 
hours of labour; if there is sickness, sorrow, acci- 
dent, or death, the people are as one family, as 
one household united in brotherhood and kindly 
affection. 

Maggie very often bakes her beautiful bread or 
brews a wonderful soup for a poor neighbour, and the 
brothers often walk across the moors to see how 
some old man is getting along — whether he has 
potatoes and meal enough for his needs. As for 
Mrs. Mullen, she is like a mother to that community 
and can teU you the most moving stories of the 
courage and the virtue and the faith of her poorer 
neighbours. 



222 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

One of the brothers took me to call on a fisherman, 
and I was much struck by this man's noble face and 
dignified speech. Just before I left the neighbour- 
hood I heard that he had sat up the previous night 
with a djdng man, because it would be morning 
before the priest could reach Port-na-blah. 

" But I thought he was a Presbyterian," I said, 
of the fisherman. 

" So he is," rephed Maggie ; " but why wouldn't 
he be kind to the CathoHcs ? Oh yes ! He often 
goes to sit with invaUd CathoHcs, and we all respect 
him greatly, for he is a verra good man." 

" Then there is no quarrel between Catholics and 
Protestants ? " I asked. 

She smiled, shaking her head. " We are all good 
friends," she replied. " And I cannot see why 
people should fall out about their rehgion. Why is it, 
I wonder? It seems so funny. One is born a Catholic, 
and another is born a Presbyterian, and each must 
get the best he can out of his religion. That is 
surely right. But why wouldn't they live neigh- 
bourly ? Their religion ought to make them do 
that." 

I visited some of the surrounding villages and 
met in every case the most pleasing courtesy 
and the most deUghtful people. Perhaps they 
are not so inteUectuaUy alert as townsmen, but 
they have calm and peace and repose. Nor did I 
once hear from these great-limbed men a grumble 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 223 

about the struggle for existence. They said nothing 
about the absence of light railways, the distance 
from a market, or the cost of transit. They spoke 
about the fish in the loch, of a famous salmon landed 
by Mr. Stephen Gwynn — " Musther Gwunn is a great 
gentleman" — and of the beauty of the mountains in 
the summer. They smoked their pipes over the 
peat fire, chatted of snipe and woodcock, told stories 
of fashionable visitors in summer, recalled mighty 
storms that had swept the coast, and laughed in- 
dulgently over the perturbation in Belfast at Mr. 
Winston ChurchiU's meeting. 

I do not know in what way these people of the 
North differ from those of the South, save in a 
rather more vivid cheerfulness and in the rich Scots' 
accent of their speech. One would never take them 
for Irishmen. The very words, as well as the in- 
tonation, are Scottish. But in tenderness, in sweet 
courtesy, in dignity and warm humanity they are 
like the peasants of the South. You feel that the 
scenery has changed without altering a thread in 
the fibre of Irish character. No words can express 
the difference between the green pastures of Kerry 
and the rock-strewn moorland of Donegal, but the 
people in both counties are the same. 

"You ought to meet Hannah," said Maggie to me 
one day ; " she's a rare one for tales ; and she is verra 
old and has Hved a strange Ufe, and she has seen 
the wee folk, oh mony's the time ! Mr. Law has been 



224 A CORNER OF ULSTER 

kind to Hannah — that's the landlord here; he's 
a member of Parliament ; a verra good gentleman. 
Mr. Law has built her a wee house, all for herself ; 
and when it was finished and Hannah was going in, 
didn't all the children in the place come with gifts 
for her ? It was verra funny. One brought a frying- 
pan, and one a broom, and one a cup and saucer, 
and one a plate, and one a knife and fork, and one 
a teapot, and one a kettle, aU out of their own pennies 
—oh, you never saw such a thing ! — and Hannah 
was quite provided for, just by the children. Yes, 
it was verra pretty, verra pretty indeed. But 
everybody's fond of Hannah. She's had a terrible 
life of it, poor thing. You ought to see her, yes, 
you reaUy ought. Oh, she's a rare one for tales, 
Hannah is." 

Could anything sound more inviting ? 

" Where does she live ? " I asked. " Certainly I 
must go and see her." 

Maggie went to the window and, pointing out of 
sight, began such a rigmarole of directions, that I 
stopped her with the plea that she herself should take 
me. 

Maggie's eyes opened wide, and her lips fluttered 
with smiles. 

" Would you like me to ?— really ? " 

" Oh, but yes, of course I should." 

Maggie was deHghted. " I will gladly go with 
you," she said, and her eyes sparkled, her cheeks 



A CORNER OF ULSTER 225 

burned, and she looked like one at whose door a 
great adventure has arrived. 

Such is the quiet uneventful calm of Port-na-blah, 
such the sweet and humble nature of Miss Margaret 
Mullen, 



CHAPTER XIV 
HANNAH 

ON our way to Hannah's cabin I realized how 
beautiful a place Port-na-blah must be in 
summer time and autumn. Maggie told me what 
wild-flowers grow in the fields, and told me how the 
hills blaze with heather and gorse, and how the sea 
hes in a lulhng calm, dark blue against the tasselled 
rocks and cerulean blue, where it spreads itself hke 
a lake far, far inland, in the midst of a green 
country. 

But it was hard going for us just then. We 
crossed the iron snow-powdered furrows of a 
ploughed field, skirted the ice-cracking sides of 
treacherous bog, scaled precipitous hill-sides, clam- 
bered over stone walls, made a way through a 
wilderness of furze, and at last arrived before 
Hannah's door rather blown and stiff-legged, but 
warm with our exercise in spite of bitter cold. 

Hannah's chimney was smoking, and the old 
lady in consequence was out of humour. The neat 
cabin — with its bed in the corner, a bright 
dresser against the wall, a Httle table in the centre, 

226 



HANNAH 227 

and a low chair before the fire — was hazy with peat- 
smoke. Even as we entered a great puff from the 
chimney sent a cloud of this thick and choking 
smoke across the room, and set Hannah grumbling 
afresh, and set Maggie and me dissembling our 
coughs. 

But when we had sufficiently ingratiated our- 
selves, Hannah became pleasant, and we sat down 
together for a friendly talk. On one side of the 
offending fire sat the Httle old woman and the 
beautiful young woman, close together on a backless 
form, Hannah's hand in Maggie's lap and Maggie's 
fingers caressing that old brown wrinkled hand 
with strokings that were fuU of endearment. On the 
other side of the fire, and nearer to the welcome fresh 
air of the open door, sat the reader's humble ser- 
vant, Hstening to Maggie's questions and Hannah's 
answers, and watching the face of the old woman. 

Hannah wore a dark blue bulging skirt, a shawl 
of fading orange, and a bright red patterned hand- 
kerchief over her head. Although she is nearer 
eighty than seventy, her hair is a coal-black without 
one tinge of grey. The tint of her skin is yellow, 
like a Parsi's, a deep dull yellow which suggests 
vitahty and enduring strength, not bihousness. 
Her eyes are brown as chestnut skins, the features 
are small and regular. The total expression of the 
face is one of passive acquiescence in the hard 
experience of human life. 



228 HANNAH 

She sat crouched up on the backless form, at- 
tending every now and then to the peat fire, which 
was raised a few inches above the hearth. 

Maggie, very skilfully, asked questions about 
ghosts, and spirits, and the wee folk. Wearily and 
rather grumblingly, like one who is near the end of 
hfe's journey and desires to be let alone, the old 
woman told us of two visions she had seen herself, 
and of many stories she had heard from other people 
concerning fairies and dwarfs. When she was a girl 
in her father's house, she came downstairs one 
morning to find a superb gentleman seated on an 
even grander horse at the cottage door. He was 
dressed in blue, she told us, and had gold spurs at 
his heels. He smiled, made a sign that she should 
mount behind him, and bent towards her. Amazed 
by the sight she ran to her father with the news, 
and the father asked if the stranger had beckoned 
her to go away with him. Hannah said that he had 
certainly done so. " Then," said the father, with 
conviction, "he is a Spirit." They both went 
hastily but fearfully to the door, and the stranger 
was nowhere to be seen. 

" And you are sure it was a ghost, Hannah ? " 
asked Maggie, smiling. 

" Whista, but of course it was. By God, Maggie 
dear, but he was terrible nice. A great gentleman, och 
sure ! I never saw finer man before or since. And he 
was gone in a minute ! Divil a sign of him at aU ! " 



HANNAH 229 

On another occasion, as she was coming over 
the mountain she saw a woman kneeling at the 
loch-side, washing linen. The loch was known to 
be haunted, and Hannah had an eerie feeling about 
this woman. It was twilight. The hedges were 
whispering with the antics of the wee folk. A cold 
wind was stirring in the trees. Sure enough, when 
Hannah got to the side of the loch the woman was 
nowhere to be seen. 

These stories, as the reader may surmise, did 
not impress me, in spite of Hannah's eloquence in 
their narration. I prompted Maggie to ask other 
questions. 

" You remember the bad times, Hannah ? You 
knew how the people suffered in those days ? You 
were through the Famine yourself, weren't you ? " 

" Thim times, Maggie dear, were divilish bad. 
Dear God, I shall never forgit thim if I live to be 
a hundred. We had nothing to eat, Maggie dear, 
but turnips, boiled, bruised, and sprinkled with a 
wee pinch of salt. No praties at all, at all. Och, those 
were terrible times ! And people who could not pay 
the rints were turned out of their cabins. Ochone, 
'twas a most awful time ! But some of the 
landlords were good to us poor folk. There was 
broth kitchens, Maggie dear, and terrible good 
broth too. Och, but the nearest to us was six miles 
away, and the children sent to fetch the broth was 
so starving that they coTild not walk back without 



230 HANNAH 

eating the broth on the way. Och, many's the child 
who came home with an empty tin and near dead 
with the walk. So the people were driven into the 
great workhouse, and my father and mother and 
all of us children were among them. But that was 
the worst of all, Maggie dear ! By God, it was 
terrible bad. Och, but you've no idea ! Do you 
know what they did to us ? They served out some 
male that killed poor people like flies, a kind of 
gypsy-male they said it was.* Och, but you niver 
saw people go so quick in your life. They was 
standin' in the mornin' an' stiff in the evenin'. 
And I saw things you'll niver believe. I saw the 
Matron take the corpses by the heels, pull thim out 
of bed that way, and go bump, bump, bump down 
the stone stairs wid thim. True as God ! They was 
buried, those poor people, Maggie dear, without 
washing or dressing — divil a bit ! Ochone, Maggie 
dear, but thim was terrible times." 

Partly from Hannah and partly from Maggie 
I got the story of the old woman's life. I do not 
know a Hving person who has made me so conscious 
of the immense gulf which separates the beginning 
of the nineteenth century from the beginning of the 
twentieth. 

Hannah's father, a field labourer, fell out of work 
in the bad times, and when the family came from 
the workhouse it was impossible for him to support 

* I understand that the meal was some inferior Indian corn. 



HANNAH 231 

his family. Hannah went out as servant to a 
Presbyterian farmer. 

Her work was not confined to the house. She 
cooked, washed, swept, scrubbed, and made beds ; 
but very much harder labour fell to her lot. She 
fed and milked cows, she pulled turnips, she hoed 
and dug potatoes, she went with a creel made of 
sally-rods (sallows) down to the rocks to get rack 
(seaweed) for the farm. When you hear people 
lament the good old times I beg you to think of 
this farm-servant. 

" Och," she exclaimed, with flashing eyes and 
snarHng hps, " that was a job that broke the heart 
of me, fetching the rack from the rocks. It scourged 
my legs, for I niver had boots in thim days. I was 
barefoot and bare-legged on the rocks. Ah, Maggie 
dear, 'tis terrible bad to have your feet and hands 
aching at the wan time. I could not wash me feet 
at night. The skin was scourged clean off of thim. 
If God had made a hole in thim rocks and offered 
to put me in head down, I'd have gone, I'd have been 
glad to hang head down — just to get off my feet. 
Ah, sure ! It was devilish bad in the rain and the 
wind up in the turnip fields, but, by God, it was 
worse on thim rocks. You'll never know the like of 
that, Maggie dear ; and as true as God's above us 
I'd rather die to-morrow, or next day, than five 
my Ufe over again — och sure, I would ! " 

Now, what wages do you think this farm-servant 



232 HANNAH 

received ? In those brave days no blasphemer had 
arrived to say that human flesh and bones must 
receive a living wage. It was believed by aU man- 
kind, as it is beHeved in Belfast to this hour, that 
wages are not to be measured by the work done 
or by the cost of living or by the laws of God and 
Brotherhood, but only by the numbers of hungry 
people asking for work. Many hands, small wages ; 
few hands, high wages. The proposition was so 
simple and emphatic, however damnable, that no 
man questioned it. Even to-day, in St. Paul's 
Cathedral, at the very heart of Chiistian civiliza- 
tion, a sermon was preached on Easter Sunday of 
the present year, expressing alarm and misgiving 
at the manful, law-abiding demands of colliers for 
a wage by which a man may rear his family just 
out of the shadow of privation. 

Well, Hannah's wage was not five shilhngs a 
day, as you may well suppose. But will you 
beUeve that it was ten shillings a half-year ? 

" They paid me ten shilHngs a half-year, and my 
keep ; but I had to find my own duds. The food 
was stirabout and praties ; och, there was not too 
much of it ! Meat ? — divil a bit ! I niver tasted 
it." She laughed bitterly at the idea. 

This place was too hard for the young girl. She 
fell ill and was turned away. Apparently the 
Presbyterian farmer and his wife did not care a 
rap what became of the friendless and orphan girl ; 



HANNAH 233 

they were too busy, I suspect, in deciphering the 
Word of God. After a spell of idleness she became 
nurse and general servant in another farm-house, 
at the same wage. There was in the neighbouihood 
at that time a hedge preacher whom the people 
called Old Livingstone. Some boys on one occasion 
were sent to prison for pushing him as he walked 
through the road where they were playing ; the 
case was cited as one of CathoUc Intolerance ! 
Old Livingstone, with his Bible and staff, came to 
the Presbyterian farm-house where Hannah was 
employed. His penetrating eyes, which tore the 
Judgments of God out of Holy Writ, detected a 
rash on Hannah's red arms. He warned the mistress 
of the house against having such a woman with 
her children. So Hannah was turned away, and 
having no home to go to, no friend in the world to 
take pity on her, she went to the workhouse. 

Maggie told me the next part of Hannah's story 
as we walked home across the moor. " Poor 
Hannah, she was terrible bad in the workhouse, 
and they told her there that if she didn't go into 
the hospital she would surely die. The hospital 
was at Strabane, forty long Irish miles away, but 
Hannah set out, aU by herself, and walked the 
whole distance. Oh, that must have been terrible, 
terrible for Hannah. I often think of her, ill and 
weary, walking that long way, all by herself ! " 

Then Maggie's face, which had been sad and 



234 HANNAH 

sorrowful, suddenly brightened. " But it was a 
happy time when she reached the hospital. Oh, 
it was so different ! And didn't the doctor's 
wife, who was the Matron, take a fancy to Hannah 
because she was so clean, and didn't she take her 
into her own house to look after her children, and 
wasn't Hannah treated like one of the family, and 
all so happy and kind ? I do not know how long 
she was there, but it was some time, and she was 
verra grateful ; but gradually her health got worse 
and worse, and at last she was too weak to do the 
work, and so she had to leave. And then poor 
Hannah drifted to the workhouse again." 

From this point in her Ufe down to quite modern 
times Hannah lived by " collecting." Maggie 
made me feel the difference between begging and 
collecting. " Hannah," said she, " started collect- 
ing — she was not a beggar-woman, you understand, 
but she went from village to village, and she 
called at farm-houses, and they gave her food and 
shelter, and sometimes a sixpence to help her on her 
road." 

Thus lived Hannah for half a century, a homeless 
wanderer on the face of the earth, but with many 
a kitchen where she might lie down and sleep for 
the night, and many a friend who was glad to give 
her a meal of potatoes and a cup of cold water. She 
was always clean, always poHte, always grateful 
for a kind word. 



HANNAH 235 

She asked for " bits " in the name of God, and 
paid for it by teUing the news she had gathered on 
her way or by doing service in the house. 

Her old head nods, and her eyes have a far-ofi 
melancholy look as she speaks of those days. 
" People was terrible kind to me," she says ; " I 
don't suppose anybody ever had more friends than 
I have had ; but, Maggie dear, it was lonely, it 
was terrible lonely. Ah, to Uve fifty years without 
a home, aU alone, aU alone, going to and fro, to 
and fro — ^by God, Maggie dear, but that's hard on 
a woman ! " 

People for miles round had a great respect for 
the wandering gipsy-Hke Hannah. They attributed 
to the old woman some mysterious relationship 
with the saints. They beheved that she was 
different from the common herd of mortaHty. A 
sailor lad once gave her half a crown, because she 
prayed for him, and because her prayers had brought 
him luck. People would gladly give the old woman 
a sixpence in the hope of receiving a cake from 
heaven. But Hannah seldom spent this money on 
herself. She would give nearly all of it to Sisters 
of Charity or to the priest of the village church at 
which she went to Mass. Once, when she was very 
hard - driven, someone gave her a florin ; she 
bestowed the whole of the money on a fund for 
building a village chapel. 

" Och, but I knew I should niver want for it," 



236 HANNAH 

she exclaimed ; " and sure enough that very night 
I made up one shillin' and ninepence ! " 

" Hannah always gives with the heart," said 
Maggie. 

"Oh, God, would you give with anything else, 
Maggie dear ? Isn't it the duty of aU of us to love 
and to give ? Is it any use to us, saving and putting 
by, whin there's heaven waiting for us in the next 
world ? Sure, I'd give myself away if it would 
help a poor body." 

" And God has been good to you, hasn't He, 
Hannah ? You've got plenty of friends and now 
you've got this nice Httle house. . . ." 

" But the chimney's a terrible worry, Maggie dear, 
Ochone ! what can I do to keep the place clean, 
wid smoke pouring out and spoiling everything ? 
By God, I wish Mr. Law would do something to the 
chimney." 

If the reader would like to meet Hannah and to 
discover if the chinmey has been put right by her 
indulgent host, let him write for a room to Mrs. 
MuUen, at Port-na-blah, Dunfanaghy, By Letter- 
kenny, Co. Donegal. But if he must have a French 
cook to prepare his meals, electric Ught for his 
reading, fashionable people to amuse him, and a 
lift to carry him up to a prince's bedroom, let him 
write to Lord Leitrim's now famous Rosapenna 
Hotel, at Carrigart, which is within a motor drive 
of Port-na-blah, 



HANNAH 237 

I can promise any man who loves great hills, 
a wild coast, a splendid sea, lochs like inland oceans, 
and a kindly aristocracy of peasants, the very 
Paradise of his desire at Rosapenna or at Port-na- 
blah. 

I hang upon this page, dreaming of my walks 
and drives and meetings on that wonderful coast, 
not only because the memories are so sweet and 
gracious to my thoughts, but because in turning the 
page I turn my back on all that is most beautiful, 
affectionate, and comforting in Ireland, and come 
face to face with that which is sinister and harsh. 

Kind, gentle Maggie, I hope that you may never 
go to cities ; poor, grumbling Hannah, I hope you 
may never exchange the smoke of your peat-fire for 
the smoke of factory chimneys. Winter may be 
long, and loud may be the storms that beat upon 
your tortured coast, but the summer comes with 
flowers for your fields, with sweetness for your pure 
air, and with sunsets flooding the smooth waters of 
Sheep Haven with glory and with calm. 



CHAPTER XV 
AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 

WE have now arrived before a door which I 
shrink from opening. Behind us are green 
fields, green-bordered roads, the wayside cottages 
of a happy peasantry, the beauty of primitive 
existence, the humble contentments of natural life, 
the scent of flowers, the shadows of trees, the music 
of cool waters, the silence and repose of the hiUs, 
the quiet going of the day, the quiet coming of the 
night. And beyond the door there is the factory, 
the slum, the struggle for wages, the problems, 
questions, and confusions of unnatural life, a 
murmur of many voices, a thrusting of many hands, 
the unrest of many hearts. 

Poverty can be beautiful ; and toil, even for a 
bare subsistence, can be gracious. Such poverty 
as I saw in the villages of Ireland did not distress 
me, did not ever shock or pain me ; and the labour 
of the fields, however hard and disheartening, did 
not depress my feelings. On the contrary, I was 
often conscious of a certain envy in my commerce 
with the peasants of Ireland ; for if their poverty 

238 



AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 239 

is afflicting, it does not embitter them ; it seems 
to purify and sweeten them ; and if their toil is 
hard, it is at least never out of partnership with 
hope. 

A peasant has always the weather to make every 
day an adventure. The mere sitting of a broody 
hen lends curiosity and expectation to three whole 
weeks of human Hfe. The farrowing of a sow is like 
a great ship coming into harbour. Can a man be 
ever broken to settled melancholy who has a garden 
to dig, a field to plant, and a byre to bed down with 
bracken for a heifer or a kid ? Is life ever an un- 
broken spell of duUness when the frost of one night 
may darken the young leaves of a potato crop, and 
a shower of rain may bring a shining greenness to 
a field of drooping wheat ? And consider the ex- 
citation of the weekly market in the town across 
the moor. It is something better than a boom on 
the Stock Exchange. 

Few things in rural Ireland are prettier than the 
bhthe co-operation of the children in the hfe of their 
parents. You see very jolly pudding-faced boys 
driving home the cows through glens and over 
moors ; you see them at sunset coming back from 
hunting the hedges, holding by the four corners 
red handkerchiefs swollen out with hen's eggs ; 
you see them with buckets and boxes collecting 
stones from a tillage field ; you see them scaring 
rooks from the young corn ; you see them on a 



240 AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 

perilous cliff of black bog learning to cut peat for 
the winter's stack ; and you see them hoeing 
between the lines of potatoes or stumbling proudly 
beside their fathers at the plough's tail. And you 
see the girls feeding the fowls, scalding the cream 
over a peat fire, helping their mothers to bake 
bread, mending the family linen, and driving along 
the country roads in donkey-carts little bigger than 
a wheelbarrow, rope reins in the left hand, a hazel 
wand in the right, a baby brother's fat scared face 
peeping over the side of the jolting cart. 

Such life is natural and happy ; it is hke the 
playing of a game. Even the boys picking stones 
from tillage probably imagine themselves victorious 
soldiers collecting loot ; while in scaring rooks from 
the wheat, without doubt they are unconquerable 
knights defying ogres and giants. But imagine the 
feehngs of the pretty maids who sit on the edge of 
a tiny cart, and drive a diminutive but trotting 
donkey into the market-town ! Cinderella, we may 
be sure, never journeyed in more gorgeous coach. 
Children always make a game of everything they 
do ; and the only life that God provided for the 
children of men is full of opportunities for play. 

How many children in cities, even well-off 
suburban children, would think it heaven to possess 
a little donkey in a tumble-down shed, whose coat 
they must brush and whose manger they must fill ? 
— a serious and real donkey, of course : a donkey 




BELFAST FACTOllY GIRLS. 



AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 241 

to be harnessed and backed and buckled into shafts 
for important journeys, who must carry chickens, 
butter, eggs, and cream to the market and return 
proudly with shiUings and haK-crowns, with wonder- 
ful jars and bottles and tins and packets from the 
grocer's shop, to be greeted by an excited family 
at the cottage door — ^not a mere seaside donkey, 
thwacked up and down the sands, kicking but 
depressed, with hysterical and purple-faced spinster- 
hood bumping on its back. 

Catch a child young enough, keep his mind un- 
corrupted by the. contagion of noisy cities, see that 
he has a sufficiency of raspberry jam with his bread 
and butter, and this is the Hfe he will enjoy, this is 
the employment which will best develop the most 
vigorous of his virtues. Such a child will not miss, 
because he has never known, the heating excitement 
and the feverish raptures of picture palace and 
skating rink, the whisthng obsession of a music- 
haU song degrading love, or the satisfaction of a 
cynical catch-phrase that cheapens earthly Ufe. 
He will grow in communion with the elemental 
powers of nature, wiU take a colour from sunrise 
and sunset, will respond to the great rhythmic 
movements of the labouring year, will acquire the 
calm, the serenity, the confidence of his traveUing 
companions the beasts of the field, and, if he has 
poetry in his mind, love in his heart, and faith in 
his soul, he will go down the hill of Hfe, even into 



242 AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 

the shadow of the grave, without fear and without 
regret. There will be a certain dignity in his face, 
a wonderful sweetness in his soul. 

" Have you ever seen one of our peasants die ? " 
I was asked by a Roman CathoHc theologian. " I 
have not seen very many," he continued, " but as 
long as I Hve I shall never forget the experience. 
I confess that I myself am afraid of death. It seems 
terrible to me. But these people see the angels, 
they smile with transfigured faces, they reach out 
their arms, they expire with a sigh of rapture and 
content. Nothing could be more beautiful. Nothing, 
nothing. Oh, most beautiful ! And all over Ireland 
it is the same ; our parish priests tell us that at 
the death-beds of the peasants they seem to feel 
the presence of the angels, almost to see the invisible 
world." 

This Hfe of which I am speaking, man's natural 
life — the Hfe, be it remembered, to which the poet 
and the painter go for beauty and tenderness — 
has religion for its determining power. A peasant, 
one knows very well, may be a brute, a degenerate, 
or a mere dense, soHd, and unreachable clod ; and 
if he is starved in childhood, left ignorant through- 
out boyhood, and in manhood is housed hke a hog 
and paid a dog's wage for incessant work by a 
master who despises him, one of these three he 
must almost certainly become. But if love — conse- 
crated by religion — ^nurses him on her breast and 



AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 243 

watches over him in his cradle ; if kindness — ^in- 
spired by religion — ^teaches him in childhood not 
only to read and write, but to observe and reflect ; 
if in manhood he has land of his own to cultivate, 
a house of his own to roof and paint and care for, 
children of his own laughing at his knee, a wife of 
his own saving and contriving for him and sharing 
aU his hopes and fears, a soul of his own to address 
its quite simple and articulate longings to the God 
he naturally loves and instinctively worships — then 
there will be such a beauty in his Hfe as the dweller 
in cities can never reach and an almost perpetual 
gladness in his heart which they but seldom even 
glimpse. 

It is a matter of rehgion. The greatest illusion 
of modern life is the illusion bred by crowded and 
distracting cities, where men herd together out of 
all touch with mortality's natural environment — 
the illusion that rehgion is a school of thought, a 
code of morals, a disputed field in the hazardous 
territory of philosophy. To the savage, above 
everything else, rehgion is fear. To the Christian, it 
is love. 

Rehgion, first and foremost, is worship, adoration, 
love. Rehgion is poetry. The theologian's effort 
to make it mathematics has been disastrous, both 
for rehgion and for his own authority over mankind. 
No ; rehgion is poetry. 

A peasant walking home from his fields under the 



244 AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 

stars, shadowed by the mystery of night, conscious 
of an indestructible self in the midst of a universe's 
silence, and moved by the majesty of the firmament 
to lift his thoughts to the many resting-places of 
immortality, knows as certainly as he knows his 
work in the fields that religion is worship, adora- 
tion, love. You might make havoc of his theology, 
you might prove to him that he had never thought 
out his definitions ; but you could not shake 
him an inch from the ground of his spiritual life — 
that the soul of religion is worship, adoration, love. 
He can conceive of no other relation for his soul 
towards his Creator. 

" Love God," said St. Augustine, " and do what 
you like." CathoHc teaching lays all its emphasis 
on Love ; and because Protestantism is given to 
insisting on errors and manifest follies in Catholic 
theology, we are apt to miss the central reason 
of its persistence and its power — the emphasis 
of Love. More perhaps in Ireland than any othej 
country of the world does the Catholic priest teach 
his people before everything else to love God, to 
love, worship, and adore the Infinite Father. 
And because the Irish are by nature loving and 
imaginative and tender, they respond to this 
teaching, develop it in their daily Hfe, and die with 
a smile of love upon their lips. Religion to them 
is as real as life. 

To the man bred and born in a city, and accus- 



AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 246 

tomed to get his religious notions from books, it 
seems a difficult thing to love God. He uses the 
phrase, but he doubts the idea. Religion, for him, 
is not safe without elaborate safeguards. He cannot 
move without a dogma ; one blow from science on 
a single article of his belief and the whole edifice of 
his rehgious Hfe shivers with apprehension. But 
a child whose world is nature, taught to feel rever- 
ence and love for the Creator of all visible things, 
brought gradually to conceive the beautiful idea 
of Fatherhood in the universe, does not find worship 
difficult, is unconscious of the need for dogma. It 
is almost impossible not to love God in a life that 
is full of blessing. 

I do not know, but I imagine, I am almost certain, 
that no rehgion can really penetrate and transfuse 
with divinity the whole nature of man that is with- 
out the exaltation of worship and the sweetness of 
love. " Love God, and do what you like " — this 
seems to me the only theology that can endure, the 
only exposition of religion that can satisfy the 
heart. It is the highest teaching, the simplest, the 
most natural. Love God, and everything else 
follows. 

But, this all lies behind us in the green fields. 
The door must be opened, poetry and imagination 
must be put into quarantine, our baggage must 
be examined for superstitions and sentiment at the 
custom-house, and we ourselves must cross the 



246 AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 

frontier and enter the courts of Materialism like 
good sensible commercial travellers, or at any rate 
like rational positivists. 

Ere this be done, however, I would ask the reader 
to keep in his mind, as we pass over the threshold 
to the other side, the character of the Irish peasant 
and the nature of his simple Ufe. I would ask him, 
before we enter the other Ireland, to question 
civiHzation's pity for primitive field-labourers, and 
to ask himself whether the life of the humblest 
peasant, in the ultimate analysis, may not be full 
of the truest beauty and the purest grandeur. 

After all, how far is the Irish peasant — *'the 
minister in that vast temple which only the sky is 
vast enough to embrace " — how far is he worse off in 
all that makes for happiness and beauty, for dignity 
and grandeur, than the shop-assistant in Clapham, 
the retired captain in Kensington, the palmist in Bond 
Street, the club waiter in PaU Mall, the commission- 
aire at the door of a draper's shop in Regent Street ? 
He sees fewer people ; but his relations with those 
that he does see are close and intimate enough for 
real affection or decided aversion. He has neither 
theatre nor music-hall to reheve the fatigue of his 
evening ; but he goes early to bed and sleeps deeply, 
gloriously, without the jingle of a vulgar song running 
through his dreams. He has no bus or tram roar- 
ing past his door, and no underground railway 
vibrating beneath his kitchen floor ; but his walk 



AT THE GATE OF DEMOCRACY 247 

to his work is over sweet-smelling fields with larks 
singing in the sky above his head. He earns less 
money ; but his needs are simpler. He knows 
nothing of the victories of Progress ; but he escapes 
its vulgarities. There is no movement in his Hfe ; 
but he goes where he would. His contact with 
civihzation is less vital ; but his contact with nature 
is continual. He is behind the times ; but he has 
time for his home. He is ignorant of art, Hterature, 
music ; but his life is art, Hterature, and music. 
He is boorish ; but he is real. He has no vision ; but 
what need ? — ^he beheves that God is at his side. 



CHAPTER XVI 
MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 

ALL the problems of civilization belong to con- 
gested cities. And the great concernment 
of modern existence in these massed and knotted 
thickenings of the human race is a matter of Money. 
For it is not only the dim millions of the labour 
world who struggle for higher wages. The greed of 
all men is for greater wealth. The manufacturer 
and the merchant, the tradesman and the company 
promoter, strive every day to augment their annual 
profits. The landlord increases his rent, the pro- 
fessional man his fees. The salesman already rich 
advertises to get more customers. The newspaper, 
already boasting an immense circulation, has a staff 
at work perpetually engaged in poaching the circula- 
tion of a rival. No one sets a limit to his desires 
in respect of money. Money is the great reward. 
More money, and ever more money, is the object of 
existence. Humanity begins to think that there is 
nothing else. 

One may say fairly that every crowded centre of 
industriahsm is a Capital of Mammon. It repre- 

248 



MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 249 

sents humanity's definite rejection of Christ's funda- 
mental teaching, the definite determination of 
society to organize itself without God. And yet not 
quite without God ; religion is there as policeman, 
and conscience is bribed by charities towards others 
to leave its own soul in quiet. But you can have 
immense religious activity without God. From time 
to time a rumble of discontent from the underworld 
of labour frightens and terrifies civiHzation ; or a 
struggle, a pressure, and an actual upheaval from 
those who are below, stops the running of the huge 
complex machinery of social fife and brings national 
existence to the edge of confusion. But the difii- 
culty is adjusted ; the engines throb again, the wheels 
turn, and society pursues its accustomed way — ^in 
quest of money. 

Cities breed the forger, the swindling financier, 
the burglar, the pickpocket, the hooligan, the pimp, 
the bully, and the harlot — all monstrous deformities 
of human nature, and all engaged, like the more 
reputable members of the community, in a hunger 
and thirst after money. 

And the joys and sorrows of a great city are tinged 
by this supreme and overshadowing question of 
money. The utmost blessing is to make a fortune ; 
the utmost disaster is to lose one. A man's happi- 
ness is measured by the amount of his incom,e. 
A man's lack of money is the standard of his 
wretchedness. Everybody struggles to dress as if 



250 MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 

he were richer than he really is. Everybody is 
anxious to seem prosperous and fashionable and 
successful. Men and women even deny themselves 
the highest and most rapturous blessings of exist- 
ence in order to deceive the general world as to 
their social position. Women will avoid having 
children in order that they may have furs ; men 
will do without a garden in order that they may go 
in coloured socks. And the lack of higher things 
is not felt ; the sacrifice of all that is beautiful 
and noble is made quite wiUingly, even cheer- 
fully ; in their judgment they have chosen the 
better part, they are perfectly content, they are 
happy. A chorus girl in a comic opera despises 
the peasant woman smiling at a baby on her 
breast, and is not conscious of her own abysmal 
inferiority. 

The degrading meanness of this Hfe, the destruc- 
tive triviality of this vulgar burlesque of human 
existence, is only possible where contact with natural 
conditions is either sHght or broken, or where 
reHgion and imagination are inoperative. But such 
a Hfe has a most extraordinary infection, a most 
bewildering contagion. Certain writers, for in- 
stance, have always been fond of pointing to the 
suburbs of London as the exclusive region of what 
we call snobbishness ; but to anyone who truly 
knows the world precisely the same spirit of snob- 
bishness which characterizes the suburbs char- 



MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 251 

acterizes also the very centre of metropolitan exist- 
ence and the very slums of deprivation and misery. 
Among aristocracy there is a money rivalry, a com- 
petition of fashion, a childish and unworthy delight 
in ostentation and mere show ; indeed, although 
the people themselves are more agreeable and 
charming, I think the spirit of snobbishness is worse 
among aristocracy than among the middle-classes. 
It is only the " scenical differences " that hide the 
truth. As for the workman and the artisan, you 
will find, at any rate among their wives, more 
vulgar pride, more foolish conceit, more con- 
temptible efforts at show and vainglory than exists 
in the most poMshed corners of West Kensington. 
" Tenpenny Dick," said Mr. John Burns, " wiU not 
speak to Sixpenny Jack." 

But the strangest contagion of this mean life is 
to be found among the thinkers of a great city, the 
writers and philosophers, the preachers and the 
pohticians, who probably began hfe with far other 
notions. Men otherwise free from all snobbishness, 
able and briUiant men genuinely in search of truth, 
are so infected by the general vulgarity that they 
too exalt this question of Wages to the supreme place 
in modern problems. They actually beheve, ap- 
parently, that could wages be handsomely raised 
all round society would be safe, civiHzation would 
be secure, and civilization could pursue in peace its 
progress towards — What ? That is the question. 



252 MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 

Do they ever think that without its natural purpose 
and its natural objective, the soul of man can never 
be at rest ? 

Every political party is engaged over this question 
of Wages. The Conservatives declare that Tariff 
Reform would raise wages ; the Liberals declare that 
Free Trade alone can keep the cost of living within 
the limits of the average wage ; the Labour Party 
and the SociaHsts exist to force expenditure and 
to increase wages for the working-classes. Every 
serious man is now thinking of life in terms of 
political economy. It is the illusion of cities, the 
obsession of unnatural and artificial existence. 

But Life is more than Wages. There is something 
which money cannot buy, something indeed that 
the very possession of money may destroy, some- 
thing at any rate the value of which a covetous 
pursuit of money must obscure and obliterate. The 
oldest platitudes are the simplest truths. The shirt- 
less man may be happier than the king. Not what 
a man possesses but what he enjoys is the blessing 
of his life. Let a man gain the whole world and 
lose his soul alive, and the bargain is a bad one. 

Until mankind comes back to the ancient wisdom 
of human experience, the problem of civilization 
will be the problem of cities, and the problem of 
cities will be the problem of Wages. And that 
problem is insoluble. Raise wages, and if you do 
nothing more, you increase your difficulties a 



MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 253 

thousandfold. Corrupt human nature by con- 
centrating its thoughts on money, turn it from the 
divine goal of its existence by encouraging this 
search for happiness in wages, and you will bring 
into the world a race of beings with whom no Act of 
Parliament can deal, no communism of a democratic 
State can satisfy. You will have then not a race 
of men made in the image of God, but a race of 
gods made in the image of animals. 

Among the peasants of Ireland — whose joys and 
sorrows are commingled with the great business of 
Birth and Death, whose lives are lived in unbroken 
communion with nature, whose human centre 
is the family, and whose divine objective is God — 
men and women talked to me of Life. Among the 
people of Belfast men and women talked to me of 
Wages. Every conversation with the peasants came 
round, sooner or later, adequately or inadequately, 
to the great issues of human existence. Every con- 
versation with the workmen of Belfast came round, 
almost at once, and with tremendous earnestness, 
to the question of Wages. 

This is the difference between the land we have 
left behind and the kingdom into which we have 
now entered. We are done with Life. We are con- 
fronted by Economics. We have left the Ireland for 
which Home Rule is a part of life's poetry, a part 
of the reHgion of the national soul, a part of the self- 
respect of a country conscious of a destiny ; and we 



254 MANUFACTURED MORTALITY 

have come to the Ireland which is so obsessed by 
the problems of social democracy, so absorbed in 
the business of money-getting, that it can think of 
nothing but Wages. 

" God made the country, and man made the 
town." There are still signs of a divine creation in 
the humanity of the one, the marks of a manu- 
facturer growing obviously clearer in the humanity 
of the other. 



CHAPTER XVn 
THE ORANGE CAPITAL 

BELFAST is Hke Tottenham Court Road, filled 
with the population of Oldham. Its principal 
streets are thronged by women with shawls over 
their heads, by workmen in grimy clothes, and by 
barefoot children. You never escape the feeling 
of factory, warehouse, and shop. It is a place of 
business and nothing but a place of business. It 
has no beautiful corners like the cities of Touraine, 
no sudden and restful charms like London. One 
is ridiculed for suggesting that it should have 
attractions of this kind. It is not so much a 
place where people live as a place where people 
toil. 

It can justly boast an immense and solemn city 
hall, a remarkable technical college, factories which, 
I suppose, are without their equal in the world, a 
few streets of reaUy splendid shops, a pleasant 
suburban circumference, and fine scenery outside, 
easily to be reached by excellent electric trams. 
But at the heart, this packed and crowded city is 
the most depressing, dismal, and alarming exhibition 

255 



256 THE ORANGE CAPITAL 

of what competitive industrialism can make of 
human existence that I have yet explored. 

York Street is typical. It is composed of chapels, 
factories, shops, pawnshops, pubUc-houses, and small 
hotels. Till eleven o'clock at night you may see 
ragged and unwashed children of six or seven years 
of age going with their pennies to buy supper in 
sweetshops. I have seen swarms of tiny girls, bare- 
foot in the rain, carrying a baby wrapped in their 
shawls at ten o'clock of a wet and bitter night. I 
have seen at least a dozen tiny children wandering 
forlorn and miserable in this single street between 
one and two o'clock in the morning. Drunken 
men, half-drunken men, and melancholy sober men ; 
Uttle, stunted, white-faced women, and fat, bloated, 
coarse-featured, and red-faced women, pulHng their 
shawls over their heads, come from the pubHc- 
houses and pass along the pavement in a pageant 
of shabby gloom. The faces of these people are 
terrible. They are either fierce, hard, cruel, and 
embittered, or they are sad, wretched, hopeless, and 
despairing. Factory girls, without hats, pass in 
hordes, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing dis- 
cordantly, sometimes larking with boys. Among 
these young people it is rare to see a big, well-built, 
and healthy specimen of humanity. They are 
wonderfully small, pale, and flat-chested. It is a 
population of bloodless dwarfs. 

But York Street is like heaven to hell in compari- 




A BELFAST KO^Y. 



THE ORANGE CAPITAL 267 

son with the slums of West Belfast. In only one quar- 
ter of London do I know of more terrible dog-holes. 

Some of the houses are Hke the ancient cabins 
which once disgraced rural Ireland, and are now 
only to be seen occasionally. But here in these 
courts and alleys of Belfast they are joined together, 
they are grimy with the dirt of a manufacturing 
city, and they smell with the acrid bitterness of 
beggary and want. I was so stifled in some of these 
dens that I could scarcely breathe. • The damp, the 
foul smeUs, the ragged beds, the dirty clothes of the 
poor wretches huddled together in these dark in- 
teriors assailed me with a sense of such substantial 
loathing that I felt physically sick. The faces of 
the children literally hurt my eyes. 

I find that Miss Margaret Irwin, secretary to the 
Scottish Council for Women's Trades, experienced 
this same feeHng of repugnance and nausea. She 
declares that the Belfast worker is worse housed 
than the Scotch. " In one particular instance," she 
says, " I encountered such filthy conditions that for 
the first time in many years of experience in this 
work I found myself unable to enter the house, 
and had to conduct the interview from the door- 
way. The house was quite unfit for human habita- 
tion." 

Even where the houses are of more modem design, 
the wretchedness of the interiors cannot be exag- 
gerated. I visited a house where the one water- 



258 THE ORANGE CAPITAL 

supply was a tap in the wall of the kitchen, which 
was the only hving room. The tap dripped on the 
floor. One of the ragged and dishevelled women, 
nodding her head to the tap, said to the friend who 
accompanied me, " Yes, that's our scullery." 

In these streets you see dirty fowls picking chaff 
as it falls from the nose-bag of the carter's horse, 
costermongers' barrows laden with bulging sacks 
stand against the kerb, boys kick about the road 
a sodden and punctured football or a wad of paper, 
slatternly women, whose faces look as if they have 
never been washed, and whose hair looks as if it 
has never been combed, stand scowhng in the door- 
ways. A reek of human mildew comes from the 
houses. Melancholy cats crawl in the gutters. 
Existence is felt to be a curse. 

The only thing which gave a sense of real vigour 
to these dispirited and despairing streets was a 
splendid black and silver hearse, the handsome black 
horses, with their silver harness, trotting smartly 
and eagerly as though to get away from such animals 
as the women in the doors. That empty hearse 
flashed through the torpor of the streets with a sense 
of sunhght and joy. It advertised the superiority 
of Death. 

I visited a lodging-house with one who knows the 
neighbourhood well. In the back kitchen four or 
five miserable men were cooking their meal ; the 
landlady sat in the front kitchen, which was bright 



THE ORANGE CAPITAL 269 

and cheerful ; one of her children swaggered to the 
door of the back kitchen, and surveyed the broken 
lodgers in that gloomy interior with a look half of 
ownership and half of scorn, humming and eating 
bread and jam. We went upstairs. The bedclothes 
were thin and quite filthy ; I have never seen sheets 
so iron-grey, one had to look twice to reahze that they 
had once been white. We inquired the price of these 
beds, which were packed pretty close to one another. 
" Eightpence," said the landlady. " What ! " we 
cried ; " eightpence a night ? How can these men 
afford to pay eightpence ? " " Oh, they only 
pay fourpence," she replied ; " two go to a bed, 
fourpence each, making eightpence ; that's the 
charge." 

In one house we came upon a Httle old crop- 
headed man, like a plucked sparrow, sitting huddled 
up on a low stool close to the kitchen fire. He never 
spoke a word the whole time we were there ; never 
smiled, never showed a sign of intelligence. With 
wide staring eyes he looked into the fire, his bony 
fingers closing and unclosing on a Httle stump of a 
stick held in his right hand. He was the hero of the 
house — an old age pensioner whose Hfe was exceed- 
ingly precious to his affectionate relations. His 
daughter-in-law told us that her husband was out 
of work, but that her two daughters and the old 
man by the fire kept things going. The two daugh- 
ters appeared before we left. One was fourteen, and 



260 THE ORANGE CAPITAL 

dreadfully anaemic ; she wore neither boots nor 
stockings. She told us that she earned about six 
or seven shillings a week as a spinner. She said 
it was hard work, and complained that the yarn 
of late had been very bad. She discussed a recent 
strike, wages, and questions of trade — this child 
of fourteen. She said that bronchitis was bad. 
The factories are kept heated, the girls stand bare- 
foot aU day on sopping wet tiles, and they catch cold 
going home. She coughed as she spoke. She was 
about as taU as an ordinary girl of ten or eleven ; her 
face was quite yeUow ; her poor little thin hair was 
plaited and pinned up on top of her head ; she had 
large, dull, vacant eyes, and seemed lost in her 
black shawl. I don't think she has ever been really 
happy. 

Think what this interior reveals ! An old, in- 
articulate man nodding his head over the grave, 
and httle girls who should be playing in the fields, 
support a family. I exclaimed to my friend as 
we left this slum house : " I have children of that age 
in England. They have leather reins and a whip ; 
they play at horses and drive round the garden ; 
they are big, strong, and overflowing with the joy 
of hfe. But that Uttle worn-out girl we have just 
left talked about labour questions, discussed factory 
conditions, told us the history of a strike ! " 

We went to see a young man who is iU with 
bronchitis. We entered a small house, passed 



THE ORANGE CAPITAL 261 

through the occupier's kitchen, and ascended to the 
lodger who rents the floor above. He lay gasping 
in bed, yellow and distressed. The room was like 
a loft. The atmosphere was suffocating. His young 
wife and three children crowded the space unoccupied 
by the one bed. He pays the woman below two 
shiUings a week ; the rent of the entire house is 
two shillings and sixpence. This young man is 
handsome in a rather theatrical fashion. It was sad 
to see him wasting and breathing stertorously on the 
dingy bed. He left his trade to seU toothpaste and 
lecture about teeth at street corners. He could 
once make five pounds a week. " Ah, but I'm stale 
now," he sighed ; "a man can't keep up that 
sort of thing for long. I wish I had never left my 
trade." 

Let the reader consider what these figures mean : 
In the March quarter of last year the percentage of 
infant mortahty in West Belfast was 28* 1 ; in the 
whole of the other urban districts it was 18*8. In 
the June quarter 29*7, as against 17'0 for the other 
districts. In the September quarter 38*6 against 
30*8. In the December quarter 24*1 against 18*3. 
During last year 1521 infants under one year of age 
died in the city of Belfast. 

It was curious to observe in nearly all these slum 
houses occupied by Cathohcs coloured pictures of 
Christ, the Pope, and Robert Emmet on the dingy 
walls. Men in the lodging-houses go to early Mass, 



262 THE OKANGE CAPITAL 

Immorality is scarcely known among the Catholics. 
But drink is a frightfulcauseof misery and destitution, 

" Drink," said my friend, " is not by any means 
the beginning of wretchedness. Mr. Lloyd George 
is quite right. First, sickness ; second, unemploy- 
ment ; third, drink." 

It must be said that here and there among these 
slums one found homes specklessly clean, radiant 
with brass candlesticks and china figures, the inmates 
decent and self-respecting. But the houses are 
really abominable ; the only two things in their 
favour are the lowness of the rents and the fact that 
some of them are condemned. My friend, most 
anxious for me to think weU of Belfast, said re- 
peatedly, " All these houses are condemned." 

Someone else said to me, " Yes, but they have 
been condemned a long time ! " 

So long as they stand, so long as they are in- 
habited, particularly by children, the City Corpora- 
tion deserves to be condemned, and the landlords 
deserve to be hanged. I have not told one-half the 
horror of West Belfast. It covers a large space of 
the loyal city, and it is packed, thick packed, with 
misery, depravity, ughness, and bitter suffering. 
And West Belfast is only one of the squalid quarters 
of the city where the poor are herded in a dense and 
swarming mass, with less room, less light, and less 
cleanliness than the criminal can claim in penal 
servitude. In every part of the city almost any 



THE OEANGE CAPITAL 263 

side-turning from civic splendour and private wealth 
will bring you face to face with destitution and 
ughness. 

And it is not only the slum quarter, by any 
means, which depresses the visitor to BeKast. The 
slum sickens and disgusts, but the everlasting 
streets of Uttle red-brick villas, the respectable 
streets of the well-off working-classes, fill one with 
depression. The monotony is almost worse than 
squalor. The contentment of the inhabitants is 
inexpHcable. Thousands of people are massed 
together in these hideous villas, which have been 
built, as it were, by the gross, which have econo- 
mized everything essential to a house and omitted 
everything necessary to a home, which are crowded 
together in a dense monotone of gloom, rows of 
cramped dwellings separated by niggard roads, 
with no sign of a tree anywhere, no garden of any 
kind, nothing but red bricks, grey slates, and 
smoking chimneys. 

An able and sympathetic clergyman of the 
Irish Church told me that the courage and the 
virtues of the people who pack these incessant 
streets are wonderful and amazing. He was en- 
thusiastic about their moral quaUties. But is it 
possible that posterity, bred in such ugliness and 
environed by such unnatural conditions, should 
be conscious of gratitude for existence, should feel, 
however high their wages may rise that life is a 



264 THE ORANGE CAPITAL 

great and wonderful experience ? The scowl on the 
faces of the men, the worn look on the faces of the 
women, the almost total absence of beauty and joy 
among the children, force one to believe that 
humanity cannot prosper in conditions so entirely 
divorced from the motherhood of nature. 



CHAPTEK XVIII 
BABIES 

WHERE home-life is beautiful, the coming of a 
baby is an event of unparalleled excitement 
and the most delightful joy. AU the pets which have 
hitherto engrossed the thoughts of the children lose 
the sharpness of interest ; doUs and toys are re- 
garded only as presents to be hoarded for the new- 
comer ; picture-books and paint-boxes are employed 
merely to get rid of the almost unbearable suspense 
in waiting for the great miracle to occur ; the 
corner of the garden for which they are responsible 
begins to show a crop of weeds. 

And the baby of such a home — I mean the baby 
of a kind man and a good woman — ^is almost always 
beautiful. Indeed, I doubt whether there is any- 
thing in the world of so exquisite a beauty, so adorable 
a perfection, so enchanting a fascination. The large 
eyes, which see nothing, the little ears, which hear 
nothing, the tiny and most perfect rose-coloured 
fingers and toes, the heavenly sweetness of the 
breath, the unearthly softness and purity of the 

266 



266 BABIES 

skin, the absolute innocence and the profound 
mystery of new-born Hfe, the evolution of the brain- 
cells into a settled and distinct Personahty — ^are 
not these things a rapture and a benediction ? 

I saw one such baby in Belfast. In the home of 
well-off people living in the suburbs of the town I 
had the delight and amusement of worshipping a baby 
that was lovely and wonderful. I watched the older 
brother and sister playing with this infant, saw the 
mother take it on her knee and press its Mttle face 
against her breast, agreed with the happy father 
that the child was amazing at aU points of the 
compass. 

But I saw in Belfast hundreds of other babies, 
every day and every night I saw hundreds of other 
babies ; and they were not beautiful, they were not 
lovable — they were the most pathetic, sorry, and 
ugly httle creatures imaginable. They were what 
people call " brats." 

The look in the eyes of these chalk-faced, rag- 
dressed, unwashed, uncared-for, slum infants is 
almost the most awful sight I have seen. It 
is an expression of apathy and acquiescence in 
misery. They have cried in their pain, they have 
rebelled against starvation, they have roared and 
kicked with instinctive but unconscious indignation 
against their maltreatment ; but the fierce hands of 
the mothers have shaken and stricken them into 
silence, the ferocious voice of their mothers has 



BABIES 267 

shouted down their cries — and now they are afraid 
to utter sound, afraid to protest ; they submit, they 
surrender, they acquiesce. 

Have you ever heard the voice of a slum mother 
shouting at her child ? Have you ever seen one of 
these slatternly mothers seize up her crying baby 
from a grocer's filthy box on the floor, shake it 
with frenzied violence, thump it brutally on the 
spine, and then thrust it impatiently back into the 
box-cradle which had far better be its coffin ? And 
have you listened for a moment to the frightful 
silence which followed ? 

But have you not noticed that the whole spirit 
of a poor neighbourhood is one of brutaHty ? Con- 
sider for a moment, and think whether you have 
ever heard in a shabby quarter of any large town 
in the world a single word addressed to children 
that was gentle and tender. I have often been 
struck in these dreadful quarters by the angry 
fierceness with which even children speak to their 
younger brothers and sisters. They shout at the 
child that tarries behind ; they run back at last, 
snatch up its hand, shake the arm violently, and 
then drag the lingerer forward at a pace which the 
little feet tumble over each other to maintain. The 
elder sister, even when she is caressing the baby in 
her arms, will shout angrily into its ears if it utter 
a whimper or kick to be set down in the road. A 
party of boys, playing at a game in the street, will 



268 BABIES 

rush up to each other in a moment of dispute, yell 
in each other's faces, roll up their sleeves in threat 
of battle, push forward, stamp their feet on the 
ground, and to express the full righteousness of their 
indignation will contort their faces into demoniac 
hideousness and passion. 

The good father in these crowded quarters of 
great cities thinks it right and natural to address 
his children harshly and with threats. He is ashamed 
of tenderness. He has no faith whatever in gentle- 
ness. His method is the loud word and the sharp 
blow. Even where religion or humanity saves him 
from actual tyranny, his conversations with his 
children, certainly his corrections and commands, 
are always in a brutal key. 

Perhaps most of us who are shocked by this 
barbarous defamation of parental love would be no 
different ourselves if we Hved in a slum. The cry 
of a baby is utterly maddening in a dark hot room 
where the mother is busy at sweated labour, and 
where the other children are ceaselessly asking 
questions as to the hour of the next meal. And 
the baby of such a mother is not beautiful and 
worshipful, but is ugly and unlovable, is pale, 
pinched, peevish, and nasty. It is difficult, I 
think, for the most loving-hearted person to feel 
anything but pity for these unnatural infants. 
They are so ugly and unreal. They are so nearly 
abortions. 



BABIES 269 

Let us remember, too, the utter ignorance of the 
parents. CiviHzation has bred a race of mothers 
who know nothing of maternity. A doctor in Belfast 
told me that he very often finds a mother feeding 
her infant on tinned meat, bread, and tea. He says 
to one mother, " You must give the child milk, or it 
will die." And the mother answers, " Only milk, 
doctor ? — ^is it to have no food, then, at all ? " And 
he asks another mother, who complains that her 
child will eat nothing, " Have you tried milk ? " 
The mother declares that the child will not touch it. 
" Let me see," he says ; and they have to send out 
for milk, " a hap'orth of milk " — ^for there is not 
a drop in the house. " I assure you," he told me, 
" that I have difficulty in preventing the poor mites 
from eating the teaspoon, so greedy are they for 
the milk directly they taste it." 

Let a man reflect on this state of things, and he 
will surely agree that civiHzation has got danger- 
ously astray from nature's road. For myself, I 
can say that the mere spectacle of babies in the 
streets of Belfast had more meaning and more 
warning for my mind than all the disputation and 
controversy that I held with poHticians and reformers. 
I would take supper with a clergyman and discuss 
the rehgious difficulty, sit smoking with a Sociahst 
and discuss the poHtical difficulty, or dine with a 
doctor and discuss questions of science ; and then, 
sauntering back to my hotel through the back 



270 BABIES 

streets of the town, I seemed to feel that every- 
thing said to me an hour before was vain and 
meaningless, that its interest for me had been 
delusion, that here in these dismal streets, wrapped 
in the dirty shawls of their mothers or carried 
in the arms of little sisters, here in these grey- 
faced, dull-eyed, listless and bloodless babies, was 
the Fact, the Reality, the Absolute Truth of Indus- 
triahsm. 

What a scene it would be — strive to imagine it — 
if one day when the House of Commons was solemnly 
engaged in debating whether, in a dawdhng clause of 
some fatuous bill, the word " may " should be 
altered to the more drastic " shall," or when a 
briUiant and pungent master of irony was de- 
lighting the House by recaUing the former utter- 
ances of a Cabinet Minister on the question of 
closure by compartments — ^what a scene, I say, if 
the doors were to open slowly, quietly, and a swarm 
of haggard children from the slums of industrial 
cities, carrying anaemic and wasting posterity in 
their scraggy arms, advanced a Httle way up the 
floor of the House, and stood waiting there, waiting 
for Ufe in a silence of death. 

Honourable and right honourable gentlemen, 
gallant and learned members, noble lords and 
grinning coxcombs, practised Hars and specious 
humbugs, honest men and faithful Christians — ^what 
would they say to this interruption by ReaHty, how 



BABIES 271 

would they deal with this invasion of their dialectical 
territory by living Fact ? 

If the children of the slums, now cheated of joy, 
beauty, and natural health, were to raise their voices 
in one agonized scream of rebellion, one bitter cry 
of revolt against the laws of God and man, we should 
spring to our feet and plunge into the blackness and 
morass of our social misery to rescue and to save. 
But I think the silence, and the lethargy, and the 
acquiescence of these httle children is, of aU facts 
and reahties, the most awful. It seemed to me in 
Belfast that I could have better borne the gaze 
of those atrophying babies of the slums if they had 
accused me, if they had pleaded to me, if they had 
mocked me. But the glazed, duU, Hfeless, and in- 
different look in their eyes filled me with desolating 
horror. I felt, first of aU, that I could understand 
the woman who murders her child — ^f or these babies 
are unlovely, one may even say, God help us, that 
they are revolting. Then I felt that nature did welj 
to mow down these sickly and artificial deformities of 
human kind with her wide-sweeping, merciless, and 
never idle scythe of de^truction. Then I felt that 
we do wrong to send doctors, and nurses, and sani- 
tary inspectors into the slums of great cities to 
preserve a generation that can only be miserable 
in itself and that must inevitably be the cause of 
even greater misery in the generation to follow. 
And, finally, I felt afraid. 



272 BABIES 

When you think how beautiful a thing is a natural 
baby, how its health and its joy create an atmo- 
sphere of deHght about it infecting the most solemn 
or the most careworn, and how it rules Hke an abso- 
lute monarch a home consecrated by love, when you 
keep this thought in your mind, it is with a sudden 
clutch of fear that you see the frightful peril of 
industrialism beholding these hordes of poor, ugly, 
misshapen, and actually repugnant infants. We 
have made the most beautiful thing in nature the 
most hideous, the most lovable work of creation, 
the most repellent. 

Civihzation is breeding these deformities of 
humanity by hundreds of thousands. Not aU the 
inspection of the State, not all the reforms in 
education, not aU the self-sacrifice and devotion of 
religious philanthropy can make them whole. Till 
they drop into their graves they must crawl in the 
imlifting shadow of a curse which can never be 
annulled by Act of Parhament — ^Nature's curse on 
defiance of her laws. They are things that have 
never been mothered. 

When next you smile into the cradle of a happy, 
natural baby, or lift the cover on that wonderful 
basket where powder-box, hair-brush, safety-pins, 
needle and cotton, blunt-pointed scissors and white 
linen are set in the neatness of good order, or 
examine the soft and beautiful garments which a 
mother's fingers loved to make before the hour of 



BABIES 273 

her travail had arrived, remind yourself, and see 
the awful significance of it, that this is one of the 
commonest requests made by tiny children over the 
counter of pawnshops in our crowded cities : 
"A penn'orth of rags for baby," 



CHAPTER XIX 
MAIDS OF THE MILL 

AS you pass through the back streets of Belfast, 
which have an extraordinary monotony, an 
extraordinary ugliness — as if a city without trees 
and without green spaces and without gardens has 
some particular power to oppress the poorer quarters 
with an added force of unnatural melancholy — ^you 
may see little children, grubby of face and ragged 
in garments, sitting on the doorsteps with their 
backs to the home, their faces to the street, playing 
at a self-invented game. 

It is deUghtful to watch the sparkle in their eyes, 
to follow the sudden movements of their little hands, 
to hear the laughter and discussion of their baby 
lips. Behind them you may see the shadowy figure 
of a woman working at embroidery or attending to 
a fire ; in the broken road of the street boys kick 
without much energy a sodden football ; at the 
corners there are little groups of unemployed casuals; 
the grimy slates, the duU windows, the broken shut- 
ters, and the Hfeless red bricks of the continuous 

274 



MAIDS OF THE MILL 276 

houses seem to be dark with ruin, pauperism, and 
brooding death. 

The little girls on the doorstep are happy. Their 
happiness continues till they go to school, and until 
they are old enough to become half-timers. Then 
for the rest of the thirty-eight years which make 
the average life-time of a woman mill- worker exist- 
ence for them is a progress of suffering. It strikes 
Mke a blow at the heart, observing these infants of 
the slums, to reflect that their trivial happiness, 
their innocent and baby happiness, is passing away 
from them, swiftly, even while they play ; that it 
is the only happiness they wiU ever know. 

To send a little schoolgirl into a Hnen mill is really 
inhuman. The only excuse for this barbarity is the 
matter of wages. They can earn — ^these poor babies 
— ^haK a crown or two-and-ninepence a week. People 
say to you, " They help to support the family " ; 
or, " It is better for them to be employed than idle 
in the streets." But they go from these unhealthy 
slums, and from a most imperfect educational 
system, and at just the very period when they 
should be living in the open air and getting the 
very best of nourishment, into an atmosphere that 
destroys the vigour of adults, and to work which 
tears the nervous system into shreds. Like a shuttle 
these little, sleepy, ill-nourished innocents are 
driven backwards and forwards from school to 
factory, from factory to home, and from home to 



276 MAIDS OF THE MILL 

school. Their brains are confused, their limbs ache, 
the blood runs sluggishly in their veins. They con- 
tract whooping-cough, bronchial pneumonia, and 
consumption. They die in what should be their 
prime, worn out, rattled, and husky — dry as the 
dust on the road, empty as an old shuck. 

At half-past five every morning the smoky air 
above the roofs of BeKast vibrates with the scream 
of sirens. Thousands of little girls, roused by these 
continuous and piercing yells, spring frightened out 
of slum beds and drag on dirty garments. At ten 
minutes to six, as if each siren were striving to out- 
scream the others, there begins a pandemonium of 
this furious screeching, which lasts unbroken for 
ten minutes. While it is proceeding the back streets 
are fiUed with women and girls hurrying to the 
numerous factories. They have eaten nothing. 
With shawls pulled over their heads, they pace 
through the streets in a great army, shivering with 
cold and dull with bodily want. Some of them 
chew starch or ginger, or cloves and even camphor ; 
some of the mothers have dosed their babies with 
a drop or two of laudanum before leaving home. 

They enter the great factories and pass to the 
various departments. Some of the women and girls 
go to dry spinning, and some to wet spinning. 
In the wet spinning-rooms the heat is so great that 
a person unused to it would faint in five minutes. 
The atmosphere is thick with steam. The floors are 



MAIDS OF THE MILL 277 

kept sloppy with water. The girls fling off their 
shawls, and, wearing nothing but a thin skirt and a 
shift which leaves the neck and chest exposed, begin 
their work at the machines. In the dry spinning- 
rooms the air is dusty with a choking fluff called 
pouce, which gets into the throat and clings to the 
air channels. When a girl begins to break down in 
her lungs, the others say, hearing her cough, " She's 
pouced." It is possibly the beginning of consump- 
tion. Some of the factories have been improved by 
recent legislation, but no contrivance can altogether 
remove the dangers of unnatural heat and flying 
fluff. 

When the girls go to breakfast, they proceed, 
most of them barefoot, from these frightful rooms 
straight to the cold and wet of the streets. The 
shock to the system is terrible, and it is amazing 
that they live so long. When our children have been 
in warm rooms we wrap them up before they go 
into a colder atmosphere. These girls pass barefoot 
and thinly clad from the tropical heat of the spin- 
ning-room to the weather of the outer world. It is 
as if a man went from a Turkish bath, barefoot and 
thinly clad, to the muddy pavements and wintry 
wind of London streets. And when they get home 
their breakfast is a cup of tea and a piece of bread. 

So the day passes, with an interval for dinner, till 
nightfall is at hand ; and then fagged, gloomy, and 
coughing, the army of womanhood shuffles back 



278 MAIDS OF THE MILL 

into the slums for more tea and more bread. At the 
end of the week the little maids have earned six or 
seven shillings. 

Thousands of these girls support their famiUes. 
The father is very often a casual labourer, and has 
become, by unemployment and self-contempt, a 
loafing drunkard, a sponge upon his wife and children. 
Three little daughters in the mill can earn enough 
to pay the rent of his slum home, to provide the 
family with bread and tea, and to keep him in stout 
and tobacco. Why should he stand in a shivering 
wedge of broken humanity at the docks, waiting for 
hard work to be thrown at him for a mean wage ? 
Has he not brought children into the world ? Has 
he not bestowed the immense boon of human exist- 
ence on these little ones ? Surely, he may live upon 
them. 

A few of these girls with spirit in their blood, 
pull their shawls over their heads at night and go 
walking in gangs before the barrack gates, ready for 
any adventure that may befall them. The com- 
petition of Httle short-skirted shop girls, with rakish 
hats, is generally too much for them, and they watch 
with real envy and with genuine pain the gorgeous 
red coat of the British soldier moving away beside 
these fashionable rivals. Then, as the hours wear 
away, they begin to mock and laugh, to join arms 
and move singing through the streets, till perhaps 
they join forces with a gang of factory boys and 



MAIDS OF THE MILL 279 

finish the night in some trifling horseplay. These 
children are always to the front in a street riot, they 
are often the cause of a fight between Catholics and 
Protestants, they have battle-cries which rouse a 
neighbourhood. 

But most of the girls bide in their homes, except on 
summer nights, while many of them actually work 
for another firm in the httle family kitchen which 
is their home, until it is time for bed. The great 
concern of Belfast is Wages. 

You will see stout matrons of forty and fifty in 
the linen mills, but the average Ufe of the stunted, 
anaemic, skinny Httle creatures who compose the 
immense army of mill workers is thirty-eight years 
of age. They become sallow and dull. Their teeth 
decay and faU out, their lungs break down, and they 
wind up their experience of terrestrial Hfe with a 
dignified funeral. 

A gentleman in Ireland devoted to the develop- 
ment of Irish industries was one day asking for 
support from a rich man in Belfast. At the end of 
their conversation the Ulsterman said, "Well, I 
wish you luck. Go on developing Irish industries 
as hard as you like, but, for God's sake, don't set 
up another Belfast. If you knew what goes on 
behind the scenes you'd lose a good deal of your 
enthusiasm for industriaHsm." It is said that the 
business prosperity of Belfast — one single firm made 
a profit of £80,000 last year — ^is built upon credit. 



280 MAIDS OF THE MILL 

A serious rise in the bank rate, it is said, would bring 
the commercial glory of Belfast tumbling to the dust 
of bankruptcy. In some cases at least this adver- 
tised prosperity is certainly built upon the slavery 
of women and girls. No man can say that the life 
of these girls is good. No man can pretend that it 
is desirable. No doctor could do anything but de- 
nounce it. At fourteen years of age they may earn 
seven shiQings a week, and in their decrepitude at 
thirty-eight they may earn ten or twelve shilliags a 
week ; but even if the seven shillings had grown to 
a hundred, who can say that to die broken and 
tired at eight-and-thirty, with no experience of joy, 
with no enthusiasm for beauty, with not the faintest 
knowledge of the boundless universe that enfolds 
the mystery of human Hfe, is a reasonable existence, 
is a just destiny ? From such loins what posterity 
can spring ? 

And if life in the mill is dreadful and wicked, it is 
scarcely less inhuman in the home of the out- worker, 
even the country out- worker. "A gentleman," 
says Miss Margaret Irwin, " who has given special 
attention to this question, speaking of the evil 
conditions of the work, and the serious results it 
was having on the health of the girls, said, * The girls 
carry in heavy burdens of shirts, say on the market 
day, which is Tuesday. They may get a lift on the 
road ; if they do not it means a three miles' walk 
for them each way, which they have to undertake 



MAIDS OF THE MILL 281 

over-weighted and underfed. Consequently they 
arrive home at night in a perfectly exhausted con- 
dition, and without any wholesome appetite. Their 
day is something Hke this. They get up badly 
rested and unrefreshed after a night spent in an 
insanitary, iU- ventilated house, and make a " boil 
of tea," say, at six o'clock, for breakfast. Then they 
do a httle housework. A second breakfast, also of 
tea, may foUow an hour later. Sewing may begin 
at ten, and six or seven of them may club together 
in one house to do this, as, of course, they get through 
more work that way. If there is a man in the house, 
something in the way of dinner may be made be- 
tween twelve and one ; if not, it is tea and bread 
again. Tea again at five, and once more tea at nine. 
They work on this food sometimes up to eleven or 
twelve at night when they have a big order on ; go 
to bed after midnight, it may be ; rise unrefreshed 
in the morning, and begin again da capo.' " 

Miss Irwin herself gives a striking account of a 
visit she paid to a young woman, " probably the 
most highly skilled worker I met with in my 
inquiry " : — 

" When visited she was embroidering a silk para- 
sol with coloured silks. The work was exquisite, 
and demanded a high degree of skiU. She was to 
receive 2s. for the parasol, and it would take her 
three days' steady work. She showed me a blouse 



282 MAIDS OF THE MILL 

piece, finely embroidered, which would take two 
days' steady work, from eight in the morning 
till ten at night— for this she was paid 2s. For 
an embroidered robe piece, which took over three 
days, she got 3s. She had done one of these 
previously, which took more than a week of steady 
labour with late hours every night, and the price 
paid her was 8s. A sister gave corroborative 
evidence. They occupied a very clean and well- 
kept house. The witness was an anaemic, deHcate- 
looMng girl, about twenty-two years of age, in- 
teUigent, and with gentle and refined manners. 
Her mother, engaged at the wash-tub in the 
kitchen, kept up a running commentary during 
the whole of my visit. ' Sure, tell the lady now ; 
it's time that someone heard about it. It's a 
black shame and a disgrace, and it's blood- 
money they are paying you.' As I was going 
out the mother came forward, seized my hand, 
and said, ' Ye will tell about it now ? Promise 
me ye will ? My Httle girl sews and sews until 
she has nearly killed herself.' " 

Whether it be in the mill or in the home, the 
Hfe of these girls is destitute of joy. Some of them 
possess the consolations of religion, and the week of 
toil is endured without complaint, cheered by the 
anticipation of a service on Sunday in church or 
chapel. The Httle drama of the street — ^its births, 



MAIDS OF THE MILL 283 

deaths and marriages, its drunkenness and quarrels, 
its departures and arrivals — these things supply the 
narrative of their gossip. For the rest, life is bread 
and tea, sewing and toiling, from morning to night — 
a life without one glorious impulse, without one 
spring of gratitude. And Hfe, says Greorge Sand, to 
be fruitful must be felt as a blessing ! 

What strikes me as the most terrible fact about 
Belfast is this — ^it is a city without childhood. 
The scowl which settles darkly on the face of 
adults is present as a cloud upon the brow of 
children. The radiant face of infancy may be seen 
here and there, but the joyous shining eyes of child- 
hood never greet one in the crowded streets. Ex- 
cept for lads kicking a football or a wad of paper 
about the roads, except for foul-mouthed, barefoot 
newspaper boys smoking cigarettes and tossing for 
halfpennies in the gutters of Royal Avenue, and 
except for little stunted factory girls larking in the 
streets at night, I have not seen a single child play- 
ing in Belfast. 

When the mother and the elder sisters are em- 
ployed in factories, you cannot have home-life, you 
cannot have childhood. The httle children shift 
for themselves. Fed upon bread and tea, turned 
into the factories while they are still at school, 
settled as regular miU hands at the age of fourteen, 
these girls become neurasthenic, anaemic, and con- 
sumptive before they are out of their teens. The 



284 MAIDS OF THE MILL 

noise of the factories, the incessant clangour of 
the machines, the stretched attention of their im- 
mature brains, and the unwholesome atmosphere 
of the rooms where they work, crush and exter- 
minate their childhood. 

I would rather see my own children dead than 
working in the very best of the Belfast linen mills. 



CHAPTER XX 
WEALTH 

TWO principal delusions exist about this great 
and loyal city of Belfast. One that it is 
religious, the other that it is rich. I do not think 
I exaggerate when I say that a man would have to 
travel far before he found a city where the founda- 
tional principles of the Christian rehgion are more 
perfectly ignored, and where the labour of the 
poorest people is more inadequately rewarded. 

In this chapter I confine myself to the question of 
wealth. There are men in Belfast who are very rich ; 
there are skilled workmen in the shipyards and 
factories who earn high wages ; but the vast 
multitude of the city is horribly, wickedly, and 
disastrously poor. Because Belfast is doing what 
men call " a roaring trade," it is supposed that the 
entire population is prosperous and contented ; be- 
cause a fewisolated cases of high wages are trumpeted 
here and there, it is supposed that only a few are 
poor, only a remnant is sweated. But multitudes 
of men and women in Belfast are dreadfully poor, 
and numbers of women and girls are outrageously 

285 



286 WEALTH 

sweated. Before this chapter is concluded I think 
the reader will perceive clearly one of the strange 
truths of civihzation, to wit, that the prosperity of 
a town may co-exist with the misery of its inhabit- 
ants. 

Among the great host of ordinary workers in the 
linen mills wages may be said to range from 12s. to 
16s. a week for men, 10s. a week for women. This 
is a fair average. Some men are employed on night 
work in these Hnen mills, married men, and they 
earn 13s. 4d. a week. Home-Ufe, of course, is 
rendered difficult in such cases ; family life is dis- 
organized ; and the price is 13s. 4d. Among the 
young people in the mills, boys earn from 9s. to 10s., 
and girls from 6s. to 7s. When there is an agitation 
for higher, for juster wages, the almost invariable 
remedy is a threat to put the workers on half-time. 
Nothing so frightens these poor people as the pro- 
spect of half wages — 6s. or 8s. for men, 5s. for 
women, 3s. or 3s. 6d. for girls. School children 
employed as half-timers in these flourishing mills 
earn 2s. 9d. or 3s. a week. 

Now, it is not possible for a man earning 12s. to 
i6s. a week in Belfast to support a family in decency 
and make provision for times of unemployment. 
Therefore in most cases the children are pushed early 
into these unhealthy mills, with their heated air and 
damp floors, and even the wife contributes to the 
family income by working at home. Life is not very 



WEALTH 287 

agreeable in these working-class quarters. After a 
long and wearisome day's work the man is inclined 
to take his ease in one pubHc-house, and the wife in 
another. Drink is expensive. And therefore even 
in cases where man, wife, and three or four children 
are all earning money it is possible to find degrading 
poverty. 

But what of the home-workers ? 

There is an inquiry now proceeding in Belfast on 
this subject, an inquiry which is secret. But in 
spite of that secrecy I hope a report may be issued, 
with aU the evidence presented before the committee. 
It should astound the conscience of mankind. This 
sweating of the home-worker in Belfast is so scandal- 
ous that it staggers the mind to imagine how civiHzed 
men can reap the profits of it, and when one knows 
that many of these men are enormously rich and 
ostentatiously religious, it stirs an angry indigna- 
tion in the soul. I give a few typical cases, which 
have been most carefully investigated by an expert 
in this particular dodge of the capitaHst to grind the 
faces of the poor — an expert in the tragedy of the 
home-worker. 

One firm gives out to its home-workers linen table- 
cloths stamped with a blue design for these wretched 
women to embroider. The cloth is about forty-five 
inches square ; the design is floral and compHcated, 
the embroidery has to be heavy and fine. To em- 
broider one cloth it takes three days, working eight 



288 WEALTH 

hours a day. The remuneration is 8s. for a dozen 
cloths ; in other words, 8d. a cloth — less than 3d. a 
day. Divide 3d. by eight and you get the rate of 
pay per hour. 

Another firm gives out an immense amount of 
work called " top-sewing " — ^that is, tucking in the 
tiny ragged corners of fine cambric handkerchiefs and 
stitching them neatly down. It is work that puts 
enormous strain upon the eyes and demands the 
very nicest care with the needle. The cleverest 
worker can top-sew two dozen handkerchiefs in an 
hour. And the wage is Jd. a dozen ! In one hour 
the woman earns a penny. A day's incessant work 
of eight hours brings eight coppers into her purse. 
But she must go to and from the warehouse, wait 
her turn with a crowd of other miserables, and 
buy her own needles and threads. I saw the wage- 
book of a poor young widow who does this work, 
with the help of her three little boys, who separate 
the handkerchiefs and thread the fine needles. 
These were the weekly earnings, varying with the 
amount of work she could obtain : 3s. 2d., 6s. lid., 
6s. OJd., 4s. 5Jd. The wage-book of another cambric 
worker showed that between the 4th and 16th of 
March she had earned lis. 2d. These books would 
not look weU either in an employer's hbrary or on 
the table of a director's board-room. They are 
documents that are fitted for the Congo. 

To sew lace upon handkerchiefs demands ex- 




A BELFAST IXTEIilOK. 



WEALTH 289 

ceeding skill ; the lace is often valuable and no risk 
of spoiling it must be incurred. A firm would not 
give such work to blunderers or disreputables. Their 
workers must be skilled, honest, and clean. The 
pay is 9d. a dozen handkerchiefs. It takes three- 
quarters of an hour to finish a single handkerchief. 
The rate of wages works out at a penny an hour. 
There is a case in Belfast of a widow supporting 
three young children and an invalid sister by this 
difficult work which gives her a penny an hour. 

An army of women go to the warehouses for 
bundles of print skirts. They take these bundles into 
their shabby homes and stitch them with a machine, 
buying their own thread. They are paid Is. 6d. a 
dozen skirts. It occupies two days to stitch a dozen. 
The rate of pay is 9d. a day. They carry the skirts 
back, and are responsible for the running of their 
machines. One woman, with six children, whose 
case has been carefully investigated, supports her- 
self in this manner. 

Here are a few instances, briefly given, of other 
wages in this great sweating industry of Belfast : — 

Ladies' blouses. Is. 4d. a dozen ; one hour to a 
blouse ; cost of thread IJd. a dozen blouses. 
Chemises, 9d. a dozen ; ten hours for one dozen ; 
cost of thread IJd. a dozen garments. Men's heavy 
cotton shirts, double sewing. Is. 4d. per dozen, less 
2Jd. for thread ; thirteen hours for one dozen ; 
rate of pay Id. an hour. 



290 WEALTH 

Thread-clipping parasol covers, removing stitches 
from machine embroidery and the paper used for 
stiffening the back of patterns, 3d. a dozen ; nine 
hours for one dozen ; rate of pay ^d. an hour. 

These appaUing figures may be in the nature of 
" revelations " to EngHsh people, but apparently 
it is general knowledge in Belfast that the founda- 
tion of the city's prosperity is oppression of this 
kind. In a Belfast newspaper I have just read the 
evidence of a district nurse to the effect that ill- 
health is due, among other causes, to the "low 
wages paid to the labouring classes." She added 
that the quality of milk sold in the slums was not 
worth the money expended upon it. " In slum areas 
it was very poor, and it was anything but clean." 
In another Belfast newspaper I read that the rector 
of St. Aidan's Church declares that part of his parish 
is " plunged in dense and hopeless poverty that 
could not be equalled within the boundaries of 
Belfast." Think of those words — dense and hope- 
less poverty ! 

At the present moment Belfast is suffering from 
an abnormally high death-rate. The medical officer 
declares that this excessive mortaHty is almost 
entirely due to pneumonia and chest affections. 
Whooping-cough is visiting the city. " During the 
week 15 deaths were caused by this disease, 73 by 
pneumonia, and 67 by disease of the respiratory 
organs . . . during the past week 146 children 



WEALTH 291 

under the age of five years had died, which was 
equal to a rate of 19*4 per 1000 of the whole 
population." 

Fully to realize the condition of Belfast it is 
necessary to visit the slum quarters, to enter the 
kennels of the poor, to examine the wage-books of 
the home-workers, and to make a study of the 
ragged, barefoot children in the streets. No honest 
man who has conducted such an investigation can 
doubt that the condition of Belfast is a disgrace to 
civilization and a frightful menace to the health 
and morals of the next generation. The heavy 
scowling faces of the poor, the stunted and anaemic 
bodies of the children, haunt the soul of an observer 
with a sense of horror and alarm. One feels, re- 
garding those swarms of children in the streets, that 
nature has made them grudgingly. 

That Belfast is rich except in poverty is a delusion ; 
it remains to consider whether the city is religious. 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

IF Belfast did not advertise itself as the most 
religious city in Ireland, I should refrain from 
making this charge against it. If the clerical 
pohticians of Belfast did not vaingloriously and most 
odiously trumpet from pulpit and platform the 
commercial prosperity of Protestantism, I should 
not make war upon them. And as it is, I confess at 
the outset that many of these men are honest, many 
of them are sincere and energetic, and some of them 
make sacrifices for their rehgion. But my charge 
is that the reHgion of Belfast, as a whole, is not the 
religion founded by Christ. 

The reader has seen that the slums of the city 
are utterly unfit for human habitation, that the 
ill-health of the poor is attributed to " the low 
wages paid to the labouring classes," that sweating 
exists in a most atrocious degree, and that part of 
the city is " plunged in dense and hopeless poverty.'* 
Such things might be said of London, but London 
is vast beyond comparison with BeKast, a great 
army of Christian workers is there in constant 

292 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 293 

service on the poor, and many of the clergy of London 
either protest against the condition of the masses 
or pubHcly deplore the failure of Christianity in this 
respect. They do not boast. On the other hand, 
Belfast is small and compact, the city may be ex- 
plored in a day or two, the poverty is conspicuous 
at every point, and instead of challenging the un- 
holy prosperity of the rich, the ministers of reKgion, 
paid by these rich sweaters, spend their time in 
denouncing Roman CathoHcs, in exalting the poHti- 
cal principles of Lord Londonderry, and in boasting 
of their city's prosperity. 

There is excessive reHgion in Belfast, excessive 
religious activity, but I declare that it bears but 
little resemblance to the reHgion of Christ. It is 
in some cases at least a reHgion of organized self- 
righteousness from which the ministering spirit 
of Christianity is lacking. It is a reHgion of 
large and comfortable churches, prosperous and 
well-dressed congregations, cheerful and well-satis- 
fied tea-parties, Bible-classes for the saved, meetings 
for the elect, and gatherings for the oiled and bland 
There is not a manifest devotion to the poor and 
suffering, not an active and vital crusade against 
Mammon; but too much opportunism, too much 
self-satisfaction. 

Penetrate to the individual soul, and you find 
that the reHgion is hard, repeUent, and Pharisaical. 
It breeds bigotry, self-esteem, and a violent intoler- 



294 THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

ance. The large and liberal spirit of charity is want- 
ing. Meekness and humility are excluded. Only 
here and there do you meet a gentle and sweet- 
minded man who has escaped uninjured from the 
iron vice of this hideous theology. The majority do 
not attract, do not win, do not prepossess. They 
disgust and repel. 

Now, the Founder of Christianity foretold that 
on the Last Day those most sure of heaven, those 
who in His Name had done great things, would be 
turned away, and that those welcomed to the King- 
dom would be surprised and amazed, conscious of 
no merit, ignorant even that they had rendered 
service to Him. Moreover, in another account of 
the Great Judgment, He showed that no theological 
tests would be employed, that no questions would 
be asked as to what creed a man professed, or in 
what particular church he had membership, but 
only what he had done to help the poor and suffering. 
Since this is the Founder's own description of the 
great, eternal, and ultimate judgment of terrestrial 
life, we must conclude — there is no escape from the 
conclusion — that the Ufe of love and service is the 
Christian life, and that theology can have no value 
or weight of any kind whatsoever, save, of course, 
in so far as it influences men to live the devoted and 
loving life commanded by the Founder. 

By this test the religion of Belfast is weighed and 
found wanting. Under the very eyes of the rich 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 296 

and respectable as they go to church are swarms of 
half-starved, ill-clothed, and barefoot children play- 
ing in the gutters of the streets. All about the wor- 
shippers as they give thanks in their well-warmed 
churches for health and prosperity are hideous and 
congested slums of " dense and hopeless poverty." 
To right and to left of them in their daily lives is an 
appalling sum of sickness and suffering caused by 
" the low wages paid to the labouring classes." 
Throughout the city, from one end to the other, and 
spreading even from the city to the villages beyond, 
such sweating of women and children is practised as 
must wring the soul of heaven. And all these 
terrible and iniquitous things are not lost in a 
multitudinous world Hke London, but are obvious, 
staring, and emphatic in a small city which boasts 
of its Christianity. 

What strikes one as the worst feature in the 
rehgion of Belfast is the self-satisfaction of reUgious 
people when you speak about these dreadful things. 
They tell you, for instance, that children go bare- 
foot for choice. They smile at your sentimental 
ignorance. Press them, and ask if it is right for 
children of five and six years of age to be out in 
the wet streets at ten o'clock of night — whether they 
like it or not ! — and they reply that one must expect 
that sort of thing in a crowded city. They seem to 
be callous and untouched by this wholesale exposure 
of childhood. It seems to th^n a small thing that 



296 THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

thousands of parents in Belfast use their children as 
no other animal uses its young. The natural duties 
of parentage are denied on every side of them, and 
they do nothing. Fathers and mothers pack the 
pubHc-houses till late at night, while their supper- 
less and half -naked children wander shoeless in the 
mud outside, or stare through shop windows at pic- 
ture postcards which degrade love, mock maternity, 
and at least suggest indecency. And these religious 
people raise no protest. They say we must expect 
these things. They never loose their imaginations 
to contemplate what they must expect in the next 
generation from the children of this. They never 
ask themselves whether Christ, if He came to Bel- 
fast, would attend Protestant churches and listen 
to violent denunciations of Popery, or whether He 
would go into the tragic streets seeking the lost, 
comforting the unprosperous, and blessing the neg- 
lected children. They seem to think that Christ 
would even Hke Belfast. 

Would you not think in a relatively small city, 
with such misery and heart-breaking cruelty to 
children on every hand, that the churches would 
unite for mercy and enHghtenment ? Would you 
not expect a religious crusade ? Consider. Would 
any of those rehgious people leave their children 
to wander barefoot in York Street on a winter's 
night ? Would they drink in a pubHc-house while 
their children hungered outside ? They know these 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 297 

things are evil. They say you must expect them 
in cities, they chide you for making too much of 
them, and they grow indignant when you ask if 
they could bear to think for a moment of their own 
children in a Hke condition. And they have only 
to think for a moment, only to reflect for an instant, 
to assure themselves of terrible responsibiUty. But 
they not only resent criticism; they are satisfied. 
Belfast is rich. The churches are prosperous. 

And this seems to me the great pivotal cause of 
Belfast's misrepresentation of the Christian reHgion. 
Everything is money. Speak of drunkenness and 
cruelty to children, and they tell you complacently 
that it is the fault of the workers, for " they are 
earning good wages." So long as they can add up 
to a respectable total the shillings and pence going 
into a home by the labours of father, mother, and 
children, they feel their conscience to be absolved. 
They seem unable to reahze that if a man gain 
the whole world and lose his soul, the transaction is 
bad even from an economic point of view. They do 
not apprehend, so fatally does money rule the Ufe 
of Belfast, that the very fact of both father and 
mother earning money is certain evidence that home- 
Hfe is impossible. The mother's duty is to feed, 
clothe, and rear her children ; to labour so that the 
home may be happy and restful ; to make those little 
rooms attractive to her husband and sacred to her 
children. She cannot do one of these things if she 



298 THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

is working all day in a factory, or toiling all day as 
a sweated home-worker. 

The factories are extending to villages outside the 
city. People rub their hands, and say that it will 
increase the wages of the peasants. They destroy 
the contentment, the simpHcity, the natural exist- 
ence and the home-life of the peasant, and they say 
that Industrialism is a blessing. It increases wages. 

I have never before visited a city where the beauty 
of Mfe is so completely destroyed as in Belfast. I 
believe this ugliness is due more than anything else 
to the false reHgion which has preached the gospel 
of money to every class in the community. Every- 
thing in Belfast, even the success of church Hfe, 
is tested by pounds, shiUings, and pence. Nothing 
is worth while that does not pay. Presbyterian 
ministers with liberal minds dare not preach sweet- 
ness and light, dare not declare themselves Home 
Rulers, because it does not pay. And drunkenness, 
child neglect, squalor, and slums are laid to the 
charge of the poor because they are earning good 
wages, and therefore ought to know better ! Every- 
thing is money. So far as I am aware, among all 
the preachers and ministers in Belfast who preach 
poHtical sermons and organize the dull ranks of 
respectability, there is not one who has ever moved 
a finger to save the children from the streets, to bring 
the slum landlords to account, or to check the head- 
long advance of the mammon-worshippers. Certainly 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 299 

there is no one, if my informants are correct, who 
has ever warned the rich patrons of religion in Bel- 
fast that a man cannot serve God and Mammon. 

I would beg the reader to bear in mind that 
which was said at the beginning of this chapter. 
Belfast is in some ways ugher and more depressing 
than any other city I have yet visited ; but I do not 
mean to imply for a moment that it occupies a 
worse position morally and religiously than other 
centres where money-making is the paramount 
concern of humanity. It is specially detestable and 
particularly shameful only because it makes so 
loud a boast of its Christianity, lording itself over 
the rest of Ireland, and appealing to the conscience 
of England on the ground of reUgion. 

That there is something twisted and abnormal in 
the religion of Belfast may be gathered, I think, 
from a letter which has just appeared in the Dundee 
Advertiser from an old and representative Presby- 
terian minister of BeKast, rebutting my charges 
against the false Christianity of his city. This 
gentleman had received a newspaper containing 
one of my articles " sent " — ^this is how he writes — 
"by an anonymous cad, with a most offensive 
pencil scrawl on the margin." In the midst of a 
very violent and entirely ill-mannered denial of my 
charges, this Presbyterian minister, so jealous for 
the Christianity of Belfast, reverts to his correspon- 
dent, the aforesaid '* anonjnnous cad," and says : 



300 THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

"My correspondent has gallantly prevented me 
from getting at him, either with evidence or with 
a horsewhip." I do not wish to labour so small a 
matter, but is there not something very extra- 
ordinary and rather amusing in this Christian's idea 
of vindicating the religiousness of his city with a 
horsewhip ? Imagine what Tolstoy would have 
thought of such a Christian. The letter is worth 
quoting because of its naturalness, its spontaneity, 
its self-satisfaction, and its absolute innocence of 
being antithetical to the religion of Christ. But I 
really beheve this letter to be characteristic of Bel- 
fast Presbyterianism. It is a religion, unconsciously 
I am sure, that ignores the centre of Christ's Heart. 

I should wish the reader to know that many men 
and women in Belfast expressed to me their horror 
of the human conditions and their contempt for the 
political pulpits. One woman told me — ^not a 
sensitive and neurotic woman of fashion, but a 
very sensible, hard-headed woman of business — 
that she cannot bear to face a crowd of workers 
coming from the shipyards and the factories. 
"They frighten one," she said ; "their faces are so 
hard ; they seem to scowl at one with hatred." 
Others spoke with extreme sorrow of the httle 
ragged children who are to be seen in York Street 
at night, ragged and barefoot even in winter-time. 

And here — ^that the reader may not think I have 
exaggerated — ^is an extract from an article in the 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 301 

Ulster Guardian, concerning the indignation of its con- 
temporaries at some of my observations. With this 
frank and honest confession of a local critic I am glad 
to leave a matter which only gave me pain to investi- 
gate and which I have exposed with more scorn and 
anger than is altogether good for peace of mind : — 

But who is responsible for the daily descent 
of English specialists upon our shores ? Surely 
the very party which is continually parading on 
EngHsh platforms the sores of three-fourths of 
Ireland and enlarging upon the sound mind 
in the sound body of the remaining fourth. This 
Pharisaical " Lord, I thank Thee I am not as 
other men are, even as this poor Nationalist " 
attitude simply invites inspection. We have 
never noticed the journals who condemn Mr. 
Begbie for what he says about Belfast protesting 
against the descriptions that appear constantly 
in EngHsh Tory papers from special correspon- 
dents of " the frightful state of the South and 
West of Ireland." What right have they to 
complain if English Liberal papers succumb to 
the temptation to discover how much ground 
there is for Ulster's self-righteousness and how 
far justified is her claim to prosperity and happi- 
ness and the rest of it ? Mr. Begbie has weighed 
us in our own balance and has found us wanting. 
We may be no worse in our conditions of life than 



302 THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 

similar big towns across the water, but we have 
been bragging as if there were " none such," and 
now we are asked to start whining because we 
are not accepted at our own valuation. Man- 
chester and Leeds may have shocking slums, 
but Manchester and Leeds do not perpetually 
run down the rest of England as seething in 
poverty and crime and place themselves on a 
pinnacle of perfection. We in Belfast have been 
doing this for several generations, and when 
a stranger comes, sees for himself, and tells us 
what he thinks of us, well, we should grin and 
bear it. If we insist on blessing ourselves, we 
cannot complain of others blaming us. 

In one respect, Mr. Begbie has placed his 
finger upon a cankerous growth in the rehgious 
life of this city, the incessant preaching of poHtics 
and denunciation of Popery in our pulpits. 
When the coal strike was at its most critical 
stage, the weekly prayer-meeting met to pray for 
Divine assistance in " the present grave crisis," 
but it was Home Rule that was the subject of the 
intercessions. Pohtical sermons, Unionist Club 
church parades, anti-Home Rule religious con- 
ventions, what room have these left for spiritual 
growth or the upHf ting of the masses ? Are there 
a dozen Protestant churches left in Belfast where 
a Liberal can worship without having his political 
principles attacked ? All honour to the excep- 



THE GOSPEL OF MAMMON 303 

tions, who really do minister to all sections of 
their flocks, who strive for the souls and not for 
the votes of their hearers, and who are more con- 
cerned with preaching the gospel of goodwill 
than in fanning the flames of rehgious hatred. 
But these exceptions are few, and, as Mr. Begbie 
points out, these men by abstaining from turning 
their pulpits into poKtical platforms take their 
careers in their hands. It is not enough for 
them to remain neutral, to try to be pastors instead 
of poHticians. Their very silence makes them 
marked men. This is the state into which the 
religious Hfe of Belfast has fallen. Mr. Begbie 
has spoken no more than is true, and there is not 
an Ulster Liberal Protestant who will fail to 
corroborate his finding. 

Belfast is built upon " slob," the foundations of 
the rich city are merely piles of timber driven into 
the marshy sludge of the river. I beHeve that the 
foundation of its prosperity is human slob, the 
flesh and blood sludge of sweated humanity ; and 
I beHeve that one day aU this boastful prosperity 
will subside in ruin. How much slob there may be 
in the reHgion of Belfast I do not pretend to deter- 
mine ; but I am very sure that this rehgion is not 
founded upon the rock. 

"Will anyone," asked BenjaminWhichcote," expect 
salvation from a Saviour that he will not imitate?" 



CHAPTER XXII 
CONCLUSIONS 

IF I were an Irishman and lived in Belfast, I 
should be a Unionist — but not, the God of 
Sweetness and Light helping me, an Orangeman. I 
should be a Unionist in the same spirit and for the 
same reason as the young SociaHst is a Unionist, 
of whom mention was made in the early pages of 
this book. I should be a Unionist in order to force 
for Belfast, by the strong hand of democratic 
England, taxation of the rich and social reformation 
for the poor. 

And but for the obsession of a very arrogant, dis- 
figuring, and entirely un-Christhke Protestantism — 
an artificially organized poHtical reHgiousness — 
nine-tenths of the workmen in Belfast would be 
consistent Unionists of this character. Even as it 
is, the number of men who ignore the hypocrisy of 
politics disguised as reHgion, and who are clear- 
headed democrats and rational materialists, is very 
great and increases every day. Since the coming 
of hard-headed shipwrights from Scotland in the 
eighties — democrats who cared nothing at aU about 

304 




A BELFAST COUPiT. 



CONCLUSIONS 305 

the religious feud of Ulster — intelligent workmen 
are ceasing to believe the silly calumny that 
Mr. Redmond will take their jobs and business from 
them and bestow both these blessings upon his 
CathoHc supporters ; but they refuse to beUeve — 
and I think they have wisdom — that the rule of 
Mr. Redmond in Dublin will be as fruitful with 
blessings for democracy in Belfast as the rule of 
Mr. Lloyd George in London. 

No sensible man in Ireland can beUeve that an 
Irish ParHament will get quicker to the goal of 
SociaHsm than a British ParHament. An Irish 
ParHament will be Conservative. Save for a few 
members from the industrial quarters of Ulster, it 
will be untouched by the democratic spirit of 
modern Europe. It will be a ParHament represent- 
ing before everything else the democracy of a land- 
owning peasantry. I have no doubt at aU in my 
mind that even if aU the nations of the civiHzed 
world were to accept SociaHsm Ireland would remain 
Conservative, and Conservative as England herseM 
has never been since the passing of the Reform Bill. 

The real Ulster Difficulty Hes in this natural con- 
servatism of the Irish majority. Little or nothing 
wiU be done by an Irish ParHament, whose business 
wiU be to deal with natural conditions — ^Httle or 
nothing wiU be done to solve the difficulties of un- 
natural conditions existing in North-East Ulster. 
One might as weU look to the British ParHament to 



306 CONCLUSIONS 

spend itself on legislation for the smallholders of 
industrial England as expect an Irish Parliament 
to labour for the social betterment of the mechanics 
of agricultural Ireland. What the Belfast workman 
finds it diificult to reaHze is this, that he Uves in 
unnatural conditions, that his existence is of no 
paramount importance to Ireland, and that the 
majority of his fellow-countrymen are determined 
to rescue themselves from a form of government 
which is unsuitable to people Uving in natural con- 
ditions. 

English people are now so accustomed to regard 
legislation as the experimental remedies of social 
reformers attempting to deal with the diseases of 
unnatural conditions, that they cannot conceive of 
a legislation which would be entirely directed to the 
development and conservation of perfectly healthy 
and perfectly natural conditions. Legislation has 
ceased for us to be a wholesome food ; it has become 
a patent medicine. It is no longer an evolution ; it 
is a surgical operation. But Ireland is a country 
which has preserved natural life. Except for the 
destitution, the slums, the sweating, and the infant 
mortality of a corner in North-East Ulster, it is a 
country which pursues the way of primitive man- 
kind — ^much nearer to the peasants of India in its 
manner of existence than to the scrofulous and 
anaemic inhabitants of our industrial towns. Ireland 
does not need, and she does not desire, the legisla- 



CONCLUSIONS 307 

tion of the Socialist, the Labour Party, and the 
advanced Liberal. She could hardly have a more 
congenial Prime Minister — this rebel Ireland — ^than 
Mr. Henry Chaplin, or Mr. Walter Long. 

Now the natural condition of Irish humanity is 
at once the great attraction and the great instruction 
of the Irish question for modern England. We our- 
selves are committed, perhaps hopelessly committed, 
to competitive CommerciaUsm. Our peasantry is, 
practically speaking, extinct. We are manufacturers. 
We live in slums. Our extremes of wealth and 
poverty, and the extent of our social problems, are 
unmatched in Europe. So complex and confusing 
is our condition that two clergymen of great in- 
tellectual abihties and undoubted sincerity, Bishop 
Gore and Canon Hensley Henson, come to blows in 
the columns of The Times over morals and economics. 
We are told, in the course of this clerical correspond- 
ence, that the idea of justice is aHen to a discussion 
about wages ; struggle for profits, it seems, must 
be left free to buy its labour in the cheapest market ; 
there is no means for ascertaining what is a just 
wage — ^the term is absurd — we possess only a very 
obvious way of contriving to pay as little as possible. 

For instance, I employ a gardener and pay him 
twenty shillings a week ; a man out of work comes 
begging at my door and offers to take the gardener's 
place at fifteen shillings a week ; six months later a 
man in more desperate straits begs to be taken as 



308 CONCLUSIONS 

gardener at twelve shillings, at ten shillings, even at 
eight shillings a week. I must not say to myself, 
" The work is worth twenty shillings a week ; a man 
cannot support himself in Christian decency on less." 
I must not listen to my conscience, to the moral side 
of my nature, when it says to me :" It is an infamy, 
worse than cheating, to take advantage of this man's 
hunger and bitter need." No ; for to entertain such 
a notion would be to import morals into economics. 
Only a blundering sub-editor, enamoured of engaging 
headhnes, could indulge a fooHsh taste for senti- 
mentahsm by a collocation of such discordant words 
as " Justice and Wages." Capital must buy its 
labour, where Misery buys its broken meat, in the 
cheapest market. On that power of our manu- 
facturers to buy humanity at bottom prices is 
founded the safety, honour, and welfare of Great 
Britain's commerce. 

To such a gospel we are now committed. It is 
perfectly logical, perfectly true, perfectly defensible. 
It may trouble the conscience of a few virtuous 
people, but it is the central fact of our modern 
existence. You can no more bring reUgion into the 
sphere of economics than you can bring a Hghted 
candle into the region of a gas escape. Six weeks of 
Mr. Victor Grayson at Downing Street would bring 
the British Empire to ruin. No man of honest sense 
can believe that industrial England could survive 
such a preposterous experiment. And why is it so 



CONCLUSIONS 309 

preposterous ? Because the extreme Socialists are 
attempting to make normal ideas prevail in a com- 
munity which has ceased to be normal. They are 
seeking to govern unnatural conditions by natural 
considerations. This is the very heart and centre 
of our national confusion. 

Do we recognize that England has ceased to live 
its hfe under natural conditions ? Do we realize that 
to pack men in conglomerate masses, to breed 
posterity out of all touch with nature, to make the 
day a torture of mechanic toil, and the night a 
pandemonium of pubHc-house and blatant music- 
hall ; do we reahze that to be so expatriated from 
nature that even the instincts of maternity and 
motherhood have to be preached and taught to our 
women Hke a difficult lesson — do we reahze that this 
is an effort of humanity to live clean contrary to the 
laws of nature ? 

It is of the utmost importance that we should con- 
front this fact of modern industriaUsm. I do not 
argue that men and women in cities must be un- 
healthy, that children must grow to maturity with- 
out vigour and without enthusiasm, that urban 
humanity must be godless and immoral. That is 
not the question, and that is not of relative im- 
portance. My contention is that the inhabitants of 
a huge and crowded industrial town are not natural 
men and women, that the conditions of their exist- 
ence are so foreign and contrary to natural conditions 



310 CONCLUSIONS 

that their thoughts cease to be the thoughts of men 
and women living in the immemorial conditions of 
humanity — ^in a word, I contend that intellectually 
and spiritually an industrial population is an 
artificial and manufactured humanity. 

When you consider that there are thousands of 
women on the eve of maternity working in factories 
that exacerbate the nervous system and imperil 
physical health ; when you consider that death's 
annual toU of infants under one year of age is like 
the carnage of a military campaign ; when you 
consider that Httle children in school have to be 
regularly inspected, like so many dotards, for de- 
fective eyesight and defective teeth ; when you 
consider that the nourishment of the vast majority 
of these people is notoriously the worst possible kind 
of tinned or bottled dietary ; when you consider 
that one of the most profitable trades of the country 
is the ceaseless manufacture of pre-digested foods 
and patent medicines ; when you consider that by 
far the greatest number of families in England are 
now Hving without a garden, treading for ever on 
stone, walled in on every side by brick, shut out 
completely from the beauty and serenity of nature 
— so that even sunset is obscured by chimneys 
and the flare of artificial illumination puts out the 
Hght of the stars — ^when you consider these things 
you must come, willingly or unwilHngly, to the con- 
fession, which is so startling if its significance is 



CONCLUSIONS 311 

perceived, that the life of an industrial population 
is unnatural and that the thoughts of such a popula- 
tion must also be unnatural. They are unconscious 
of the majesty of nature, unaware even of the 
mystery of their own bodies. A tired cynicism, a 
brutal depreciation of glory and enthusiasm, a harsh 
embittered contempt for wonder and reverence 
paralyses the noblest functions of these artificial 
minds. In the soHtude of their souls such people 
are as different from natural man as the Thames of 
Wapping from the Thames of Marlow. 

Consider, too, the state of things in the region of 
intellectual thought. The playwrights of civihzation, 
and a considerable number of noveHsts and philos- 
ophers, devote themselves almost entirely and 
with a most fantastic seriousness to what civihzation 
has termed the Marriage Problem. 

The woman who refuses to bear children is the 
great figure of modern art. She is the rouged, frizzed, 
corseted, and scented Madonna in the temple of 
our chattering MateriaHsm. She regards maternity 
through blackened eyes with a shuddering horror, 
and turns to adultery with a quiver of artistic satis- 
faction. The good man who marries a good woman, 
who sacrifices himself for posterity and finds in the 
sacrifice the enthusiasm of his Ufe, cuts but a sorry 
if not a ridiculous figure on the modern stage. It is 
only to a music-haU audience that a man may appear 
with an infant in his arms, and then it is to degrade 



312 CONCLUSIONS 

fatherhood and to set the atmosphere, that reeks 
with whisky and tobacco, rocking with hilarious 
laughter. The central companion of the adulteress 
on the modern stage is the smooth blackguard who 
breaks the sacred law of hospitahty and coos his 
unholy way to the dishonour of his friend's wife, 
even, as in one notorious case, actually to the 
violation of his host's daughter — then to write a 
book about it ! 

Adultery has always had, like dirty stories, a 
morbid fascination for the backward individuals of 
an artificial state ; but it has been reserved for a 
community so artificial and unnatural as our own to 
exalt the adulteress, to justify the seducer, and to 
make — ^not the universe, not God, not love, not 
righteousness, not science — but dirty-mindedness 
the intellectual occupation of its serious thinkers. 

Take, also, the condition of mind which exists 
among those women of our cities who for the sake of 
getting a Parhamentary vote set at defiance the 
whole law of Christ and tread imderfoot the very 
modesty of nature. A man tempted by hunger may 
break the law of Christ, may defy the criminal law, 
and we pity him, excuse him, and punish him ; but we 
are asked not to excuse, but verily to admire, women 
who violate the most fundamental laws of humanity, 
who adjudge themselves superior to the teaching of 
Christ, who in cold blood and with calculation adopt 
violence as a method, who drag the modesty and 



CONCLUSIONS 313 

beauty and self-effacement of womanhood through 
the mud of degradation — ^for the sake of a vote. 

Take, again, the condition of pubHc opinion. 
Men notorious for crime or rascaUty occupy un- 
challenged a prominent place in the national Hfe. 
A swindler who enriched himself by the ruin of 
many thousands of people, and who bought himself 
a place in the country, where he made lackeys and 
sponges of the peasantry, has this Hne for his 
epitaph, " He was kind to the poor." And nobody 
laughs ; nobody denounces the squirming senti- 
mental hypocrisy of that unhallowed grave. A 
company promoter, who Uke a prostitute every day 
dresses himself attractively, and goes abroad smiling 
and captivating, and over the luncheon table of 
restaurants makes himself agreeable to rich old men 
for the sake of robbery — a man who in any natural 
state of existence would be put in the pond or hung 
from the nearest tree — may go in London un- 
punished by the law, continue his swindling in the 
eye of authority, and even be accepted by thousands 
of his fellow-countrymen as a hero of rational 
common sense. Of all the ministers of rehgion, 
tumbling over each other in London, there is no 
one to proclaim the scandal of this pubHc apathy. 

Authority in London also accepts as natural, as 
unalterable, a state of things which exists in no 
single city of Ireland — a procession, almost an army, 
of women parading the most central streets for 



314 CONCLUSIONS 

the purpose of immorality, challenging the eyes of 
virtuous women with a mocking boldness, and 
startHng pure and lovely children wellnigh out of 
their senses. This abomination, which the least 
virtuous village in England would regard as the 
triumph of hell, is considered in London, and in 
the great industrial cities, a natural evil. 

A certain corner of Hyde Park has become the 
centre for a most atrocious and unspeakable vice ; 
and neither the manhood of the city, nor the poUce, 
take steps to crush it out of existence. These things, 
we are told, exist everywhere ; it is impossible to 
stop them. 

Pubhc opinion in England has suffered an enor- 
mous change since the coming of the industrial era. 
Once it was robust for virtue, a trifle truculent and 
boisterous perhaps, but always healthy, wholesome, 
downright and masculine. But with the coming of 
industriahsm it lost vigour and slackened in its 
fibre. It is now Httle more than spasmodic senti- 
mentahsm. At one minute society empties its purse 
at the feet of General Booth, at the next it is giving 
bazaars in aid of the victims of a shipwreck, and at 
the next, as Mr. Masterman puts it, " shepherding 
its friends into drawing-room meetings to listen to 
some attractive speaker — ^an actor, a Labour 
member, a professional humorist — ^pleading for pity 
to the poor." However organized, it has not now 
even force enough to prevent women of virtue walking 



CONCLUSIONS 315 

about the streets dressed so grotesquely, so inde- 
corously, and so stupidly that an honest countryman 
must think them mad. The very street boys of 
London have lost the quickness of their eye and the 
energy of their mockery for ridiculous absurdity. 
People are afraid to express censure or to laugh at 
monstrosity. Not one man in ten thousand is strong 
enough pubHcly to express contempt for the folly 
and debasement of the times. 

But I think one perceives more clearly than else- 
where the unreality of modern civiHzation in the 
works of Hterary reformers, both EngHsh and 
American. Books and plays are treated with a 
high seriousness that expose the vices and excesses 
of plutocracy, that draw lurid pictures of extrava- 
gance, luxury, and ostentation among a mere hand- 
ful of people who have scrambled to the top of the 
swarming ant-heap of industrialism. Democratic 
poHticians catch fire from these books and plays, 
and the platform as weU as the stage, the newspaper 
columns as well as the libraries, are loud with scorn 
and denunciation of the rich. 

Everyone living in contact with modern civiliza- 
tion is in a hurry ; not only the Smart Set, but the 
prophets and teachers, are rushing to exhaust life. 
They have no time for deliberation. The ancient 
injimction, " Be still, and know that I am God," is 
scouted as absurd ; the man in a motor-car does not 
even stop when he has knocked over a bicyclist or 



316 CONCLUSIONS 

run his wheels over a child. The great thing now is 
not to pause, not to rest, not to be stiU, but to race 
like the wind. These Hterary and poHtical reformers, 
for instance, seem incapable of the most elementary 
reflection. They do not see, apparently, that if 
plutocracy were abolished, if the wealth of these few 
people were distributed over the general field of 
national Hfe, and if Sociahsm in fullest measure came 
to the- rescue of civilization, humanity would be in 
just as perilous and calamitous a condition as it is at 
the present moment. It will still be, to quote Mr. 
Masterman again, " a compHcated machine, which 
has escaped the control of aU human volition, and 
is progressing towards no inteUigible goal . . . some 
black windmill, with gigantic wings, rotating un- 
tended under the huge spaces of night." 

Except in so far as the land laws have suffered 
the peasantry to rot, and have driven rural England 
into the slums of cities, the fault of aU our misery lies 
at the door of democracy. The working-classes 
make England great or small. It is the soul of 
the working-classes that makes her righteous or 
infamous. It is the spirit of the working-classes that 
determines the tone and tendency of English Hfe. 
Plutocracy may scatter its money as it will, Aris- 
tocracy may be gracious or stupid, even Art and 
Literature may fall victims to ephemeral excitements 
and transitory crazes, losing all contact with the 
high and lofty interests of immortality ; but so long 



CONCLUSIONS S17 

as democracy is virtuous, so long as democracy is 
conscious of reverence and wonder, so long as 
democracy honours motherhood and makes home- 
life the altar of the national rehgion, England will 
be great, civiHzation will be secure, and the blessing 
of God will rest upon the English people. 

But democracy is ceasing to care for the things 
which make Hfe beautiful and serene. HumiHty is 
out of fashion, and self-aggression is the law. Not 
to live simply, and healthfully, and gratefully, but 
to live richly, showily, and noisily is the passion of 
the industrial population. It is like a stampede in 
a moment of crisis. It is as if the ship of national 
life were sinking, and men, forgetting faith in God 
and hope of immortaUty, thrust women out of their 
way, crush children under their feet, and make for 
boats which will not live an hour in the sea of God's 
judgment. Money, not Hfe, is the occupation of 
their thoughts. They are persuaded that pleasure 
can be bought, that rest is marked with a price, 
that peace is to be had in the market-place. They 
will not listen to the wisdom of the ages, they are 
impatient with the warning of history, they actually 
ignore and accuse of darkness the Light of the World. 
The symbol of democracy is the Lion of Force, not 
the meek and lowly Lamb of God. 

And nothing else can be expected of an industrial 
democracy. The millions of England Hve no longer 
out of doors. They see nothing of nature's quiet. 



318 CONCLUSIONS 

They experience nothing of nature's grandeur. 
They are shut up within walls for the long hours of 
their labour, and they go from their labour to a dark 
and sunless house in the slums. They have no ex- 
perience of nature, no experience of home. Their 
wives toil in factories, or at sweated labour in a 
miserable kitchen ; their children are pale, querulous, 
and unhkeable ; the food they eat is ill-cooked and 
hideously set before them ; they have no gardens 
where they may dig, plant, and reap ; the rooms 
they inhabit are airless and dirty ; the beds they 
lie on are vile and unrestful. They awake to the 
clamour of the factory bell. 

From the music-hall, where domestic life is de- 
graded ; from the cinematograph exhibition, where 
crime and reckless adventure are exalted ; from the 
pubhc-house, where poison is drunk and where 
boxing, football, dog-fighting, and horse-racing are 
discussed loudly and excitedly in a din of voices ; 
from the football match on Saturday afternoons, 
and the newspaper full of murders and divorces on 
Sunday — what can these people gather to elevate 
their minds and dignify their souls ? 

And even, as is very often the case, where the 
women are clean, thrifty, and domestic, where the 
men are inteUigent, temperate, and self-respecting, 
you find that their souls are almost always untouched 
by the grandeur and blessing of existence. They 
have Uttle or no conception of the dignity of spiritual 



CONCLUSIONS 319 

life. They toil that their daughters may not have 
to go out as domestic servants, and that their sons 
may pass competitive examinations and wear black 
coats for the rest of their days. Their holiday is 
spent on a shore so packed with humanity that you 
cannot see the sand. They pity the field labourers 
whom they see from the windows of their crowded 
railway carriage. To spend an hour in a wood, an 
hour in a field, an hour in exploring a hedgerow, 
would be a form of torture to them. They read 
novelettes that flatter aristocracy. They dress to look 
fashionable. They walk the streets to show them- 
selves. They go to church because it is respectable. 

The very best people in an industrial population 
suffer from the unnatural conditions of their Hves. 
They are out of touch with Reality. 

Mr. Healy said recently in the House of Commons : 
" You may be a great Empire, but we cannot 
afford you." It is true, morally as weU as economic- 
ally, that Ireland cannot afford Great Britain. 
Cathohc Ireland desires natural conditions and 
conservative patience. She is in less hurry to 
exhaust life than " awakened " and modern China. 
She would develop her resources quietly and 
naturally. She is of opinion that existence is more 
important than wages. She has no ambition to be 
rich at the cost of peace, to gain the whole world 
and lose her soul. She beHeves that home-life is 
the centre of human life, that the spirit of the 



320 CONCLUSIONS 

individual is indestructible and divinely immortal, 
that virtue is of immense importance, that com- 
munion with God is a reality and a blessing, that 
the foremost concern of every man, woman, and 
child — ^the concern infinitely more important than 
any conceivable advantage in the material world — 
is the spiritual Hfe. 

The spiritual Hfe ! How odd that phrase would 
sound in the pubHc-houses of our industrial slums. 
Would it be understood ? Would it have any more 
significance than a sonnet of Shakespeare ? In 
Catholic Ireland — even among the most ignorant 
of the peasants, the most demoralized of the 
urban population — spiritual life is the supreme 
Reality. 

If, then, I lived in rural Ireland I should be for 
Irish self-government. I should want to save my 
country from dragging at the heels of a rich, power- 
ful, and sorely troubled nation committed to in- 
dustrialism. I should fight to preserve the character 
of my own people, their simplicity, their natural 
conditions, their contentment, and their faith in 
God. And if I lived in Belfast, as I said before, I 
should be a Unionist, a Unionist for the sake of 
England's purse and her genius for social legislation. 

But I live in England, and here in England, 
writing the last pages of this book, I am conscious 
that the Irish question — ^rescued from the rival 
schools of Nationalists and Orangemen — ^presents 



CONCLUSIONS 321 

an individual question to the mind of honest and 
disinterested men which admits of two contrary 
answers. 

Is it possible, one asks oneself, to arrest the head- 
long and tumultuous course of modern industriaHsm? 
Is it possible for Ireland to make herself an oasis of 
tranquillity and spiritual peace in the sand-storm of 
materiaUsm which is now raging across this desert 
of modern life ? Is it not better for her to cUng 
with all her might to England, trusting that the 
immense wealth, the unparalleled might, and the 
amazing luck of this tremendous neighbour may 
bring her safely through the storm, may land her at 
last in some unimagined millennium ? 

On the other hand, remembering the slums of 
Belfast and the beauty of Port-na-blah, one is 
tempted to cry out to England with all the energy 
of one's soul, that she has taken a wrong road, that 
ruin awaits her in the near distance, that at aU 
hazards she must stop and get back as soon as 
possible to the path of nature. 

It seems the most monstrous thing in the world 
to suggest that our great, mighty, and most glorious 
England should call a halt, should stop in her trium- 
phant progress of conquest and dominion, should 
interrupt her work of solving social problems, to 
listen for a moment to some humble voice crying 
that her feet are on the way of ruin and calamity. 
As weU might a vegetarian interrupt the mastication 



322 CONCLUSIONS 

of roast beef at the Lord Mayor's Banquet with a 
chemical analysis of pea-nuts and lentils. 

I will not presume to lift my voice and cry a halt. 
It may be that out of our present distress England 
is weaving some wondrous pattern of the Infinite Will. 
It may be that industriaHsm, and aU the battling 
for material rewards, and aU the struggle for mere 
animal existence among the millions of democracy, 
have a subHme significance, are in the moving light 
of divine revelation. Much in this fierce and awfid 
civiHzation must perish, but some wonderful beauty 
may survive that will Hghten for evermore the way 
of humanity. I can imagine such an emergence, 
though I cannot detect a shadow of its coming. 

But I think it is wise for Ireland to pursue her 
own road. I am convinced that England has no 
legitimate right to coerce the soul and character of 
Ireland, to compel that little nation to march at her 
heels. And I beHeve that it is good for England to 
possess in her Empire, and close at her luxurious 
door, this modest, affectionate, and thrifty people 
who are strugghng to Hve the spiritual life. 

After all, the two nations are endeavouring to 
make two different experiments. England is seeking 
to hve without relation to Nature. Ireland is seeking 
to Hve without relation to MateriaUsm. Both en- 
deavours are worth a student's while to watch ; 
the contrast may have an infinite value for the 
philosophers of the next century. As Ireland has 



CONCLUSIONS 323 

no right to prevent England from making her ex- 
periment, England has no right to prevent Ireland 
from making hers. And remember, it has been 
England's beUef until quite recently that a bold 
and a free peasantry is essential to national great- 
ness, that a rural population is of more concern to 
a State than an urban population. Ireland, on this 
matter, has not changed her mind. And England 
used to think — ^if her greatest poets and sages are to 
be trusted — ^that the home is the unit of the nation, 
that rehgion is the supreme law of the individual, 
and that it is impossible to serve both God and 
Mammon. On these matters, too, Ireland has not 
changed her mind. 

England has changed her mind with the realiza- 
tion that it is possible not only to live, but even to 
create enormous wealth, in conditions which are 
unnatural. She has made her own ReaHty — a, tre- 
mendous and most awe-inspiring ReaHty — and in 
contemplation of this immense ReaHty of her own 
creation, she has lost almost the knowledge of the 
older if less reputable ReaHty of nature. At any 
rate, she is indifferent to it. Her cities boast the 
increase of their herded humanity. Sanitation 
issues its chaUenges to Arcady. The Model DwelHng 
multipHes as the thatched cottage faUs into ruin. 
And the Labour Party, monopoHzing ParHament, 
has a mandate from every workman in the State, 
except the peasant* 



324 CONCLUSIONS 

One may almost say that England has lost her 
taste for nature — as a man loses his taste for a 
particular wine, a particular game. She is able to 
contemplate creation without wonder and without 
admiration. She is able to confront the tremendous 
thought of God without reverence and without 
misgiving. She is sceptical about immortaUty, and 
contemptuous of rehgious enthusiasm. She has 
ceased to be the poet of this beautiful earth and the 
priest of the immense universe which overshadows 
humanity ; she has become the critic of natural 
law, the detective looking everywhere for the finger- 
prints of God to prove Him guilty of inferiority to 
human ideas. It may be, as one of her men of 
science has expressed it, that England's destiny is 
" to put the final question to the Universe with a 
soHd passionate determination to be answered." 
But before the Universe surrenders to this baiHff's 
summons, England is certain to be the first of all 
European countries, the first of all peoples with a 
huge and complex civilization, to make the experi- 
ment of SociaHsm — some form of Socialism. 

However wisely and quietly this experiment may 
be made, Ireland — which will be the last of all 
nations to abandon Conservatism — ^has a right to 
be excluded from it, just as rich people have a right 
to make their investments abroad and to spend their 
winters in the south of France. And this, when all 
is said and done, is the spirit of Ireland's demand 



CONCLUSIONS 325 

for self-government. She desires neither to live upon 
our bounty nor to share the perils of our legislative 
experiments. She claims her freedom to make her 
own destiny. 

I am sure that Ireland will always be a small 
nation, and I hope that England may continue to 
be a great nation. I am as anxious to watch the 
experiment of England's attempt to live without 
relation to nature as Ireland's attempt to live with- 
out relation to materiahsm. But, on the whole, my 
sympathies are with Ireland. I think that Ireland 
is likely to be happier than England. I think her 
experiment is more beautiful than England's, and I 
think she wiU find it less difficult and troublesome 
to live outside materialism than England will find 
it easy to live outside natural conditions. And my 
book, I hope, may persuade all men in England able 
to look at the Irish question without the distorting 
frenzy of faction, to honour Ireland for her sense 
of nationaHty, to reverence her for the beauty and 
simplicity of her Hfe, to be interested in her choice 
of natural simplicity, and to help her with all the 
power they possess to win that relative and re- 
stricted freedom, proposed by the present measure 
of Irish self-government, without which it is im- 
possible for her to continue her experiment with 
safety and with self-respect. 



ON THE SWEATING OF BELFAST 

THE following note appeared recently in the 
Daily Chronicle, answering three Belfast corre- 
spondents, Mr. Garrett Campbell, Mr. Cecil Pirn, 
and Mr. J. H. Stirling, who resented some of my 
remarks on the linen industry : — 

Official Disclosures 

We can assure Mr. StirHng that we have no 
desire to " throw mud in handfuls at Belfast." 
Our contention is that the conditions of labour 
in the textile trades of that city are very far from 
what they ought to be, and are in other towns in 
the United Kingdom. And, further, we contend 
that the attention of the workers is designedly 
distracted from all attempts at bettering their 
conditions of labour by talk about imaginary 
dangers to the unity of the Empire, and by a 
continual stirring up of the flames of rehgious 
bigotry. 

As to the condition of things in the linen 
trade, no doubt Mr. StirHng has heard of the 
report of Dr. Baihe, the Medical Superint^ident 
Officer of Health for Belfast. Dr. BaiHe's sound- 

326 



ON THE SWEATING OF BELFAST 327 

ness on the question of the Union is beyond sus- 
picion. He was a Unionist member of the cor- 
poration, and only resigned this position in 
order to take up the one he now holds. 

Mr. Stirhng speaks of the home-workers of 
Belfast as being " only a minute percentage of 
the whole industrial population." What does 
Dr. Baihe say on this point ? He says that there 
are about 3700 out-workers* under inspection, 
but he goes on to show that this is very far from 
including all the out- workers in the town : 

Some employers seek to evade their re- 
sponsibiHty under this section of the Act by 
ceasing to employ out-workers for a short 
period at February 1 and August 1, when 
the lists are due. And some attempts to fill 
in false or insufficient Hsts were discovered. 
One firm sent in a Ust having 80 per cent of the 
names and addresses given incorrectly, and 
an agent sent in a list giving only about 25 
per cent of the workers known by the in- 
spector to be employed by her. 

And what does Dr. Bailie have to say about 
the wages earned by these out-workers ? 

It is to be regretted that no improvement 
has been noted in the rate of payment given 
to out-workers in the city . . . which is still 

* "Out- workers" is the Belfast term for people who work in 
their own homes — home-workers. 



328 ON THE SWEATING OF BELFAST 

far too low. In the last week of December, 
for instance, a woman was observed em- 
broidering small dots on cushion covers ; there 
were 300 dots on each cushion, and for sewing 
these by hand she received the sum of Id. She 

SAID THAT FOR A DAY'S WORK OF THIS KIND 
SHE WOULD HAVE DIFFICULTY IN MAKING 6d. 

Nor is this an exceptional case. Quite 
recently our inspector was shown handker- 
chiefs which were ornamented by a design 
in dots ; these dots Were counted, and it was 
found that the workers had to sew 384 dots 
for a penny. Comment is needless. 

Badly Paid Work 

Among the various kinds of badly paid work 
noticed may be mentioned : 

Children's pinafores (flounced and braided), 
4Jd. per dozen. 

Women's chemises, 7Jd. per dozen. 

Women's aprons, 2Jd. per dozen. 

Men's shirts, lOd. per dozen. 

From these very low rates of pay must be 
deducted the time spent in visiting the ware- 
houses for work, the necessary upkeep of the 
worker's sewing-machine, and the price of the 
thread used in sewing, which is almost in- 
variably provided by the worker. After these 
deductions are made, the amount left to the 



ON THE SWEATING OF BELFAST 329 

workers is so extremely small as to make one 
wonder if they are benefited by the work at all. 
Much the same scale of pay is found among 
the workers at the various processes of the 
linen trade, these workers constituting the 
larger proportion of the out- workers of Belfast. 
One penny per hour is the ordinary rate, 
and in many cases it falls below this. 

Work among the out- workers of Belfast 
continues to be complicated by the fact that 
much of the out-work done in the city in con- 
nection with the linen trade is not included in 
the trades listed as notifiable to the local 
authority. For this reason some of the em- 
ployers do not and cannot be compelled to send 
in lists of their out-workers. 

In face of this statement by Dr. Bailie, Mr. 
Stirhng can hardly be justified in saying that 
" Belfast has been raked with a fine comb by the 
Sociahsts and NationaHsts to find awful examples 
of the sweaters' tyranny." Nor can we follow 
h\m when he says that Sir Ernest Hatch, who 
is the chairman of the Committee appointed by 
the Board of Trade to inquire into the facts 
revealed by Dr. Baihe's report, " has certainly no 
bias in favour of the employers." Sir Ernest 
Hatch was for years a Unionist member of 
Parliament, and Mr. Stirhng may rest assured 
that he will be fair to everybody. 



330 ON THE SWEATING OF BELFAST 

Belfast v, Oldham 

Mr. Garrett Campbell and Mr. Cecil Pirn tell us 
that the average wage paid to able-bodied men 
in the linen mills of Belfast would be well above 
25s. a week. This may or may not be true, but 
it may be pointed out that the number of able- 
bodied men employed is very few i-^is compared 
with the total number of workers. In the last 
number of the Labour Gazette the total earnings 
of 18,309 persons engaged in all departments of 
the linen industry in Belfast in the week ending 
March 23 last are given, and they amount to 
£11,267, which is 12s. 3Jd. a head. 

If we turn to Oldham we find in the same 
week that 14,845 textile workers earned £15,820, 
or 21s. 4d. per head. But the workers in Oldham 
have a strong trade union behind them, and do 
not bother their heads about Lord Londonderry 
and Sir Edward Carson. 

To the ordinary person it would seem that 
even if everything foretold came to pass after 
the Irish ParUament meets in Dubhn, wages can 
hardly go below Id. an hour and find your own 
thread and sewing-machine. Nor is it hkely that 
even Mr. Redmond will be able to make some 
poor wretched creature sew more than 384 dots 
on a pocket-handkerchief for a penny. 



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